Shakespeare was a Bowler – A Defence of Australia’s Batsmen, 4th Test

Well, someone has to do it. Because the British media are in triumphal mood and the Australian media are in lynching mood.  Both sets of commentators are indulging in an orgy of ageism. Perspective is lacking. A pound of flesh demanded.

Up in Dressing Room 7, where the old timers meet to judge a day’s play over a glass of shandy-ga, they are far more forgiving, for many have batted in similar conditions to those faced by Australia’s batsman on the first morning of the fourth Test played in the field behind the Trent Bridge Inn. And captains have famously declared ‘behind’ in order to get at the opposition in such conditions.

What conditions?

As this interesting preview of the Fourth Test in the Telegraph written in July by Alan Tyers reminds readers,  Nottinghamshire had their knuckles severely wrapped by the ICCin the shape of a formal warning for their wicket in 2014. Since then the square has been re-laid.

So, this Test match is played on a new wicket, in its first season. Hum.

Mr Tyers also reminds readers of alterations to both the ground layout – a new Radcliffe Rd End stand in 1998, the Fox Road stand in 2002 and the New Stand in 2008 which taken together have resulted in reducing air disturbances across the wicket – and to the outfield where a base of sand allows heavy watering of the turf which causes greater humidity.  These consequences – greater humidity and stiller air over the wicket – have combined to increase the occurrence of ideal conditions for late swing (as the ball enters the denser undisturbed humid layer of air just above the pitch surface).

Thus, might followers better comprehend this extraordinary tweet from the ever juvenile @derekpringle on the 31^st July, “Definitely get the hosepipes off Trent Bridge now that Jimmy Anderson has been ruled out with a side strain”.

However, it would need more than a ‘hosepipe ban’ to halt the passage of events already set in motion by then.  Nature has its own hosepipes at work in this damp and overcast British summer.

“Same for both sides,” is your reply.

Indeed, batsmen from both sides must have looked with some fear and much trepidation at the virginal day-glow wicket they found when they arrived on Tuesday. Perhaps England’s Millennials may, like puppies, have relished a frolic in these fresh conditions, but the more experienced would more likely have sucked through their teeth and whistled in preparation of digging in under their helmets.

The same for both sides? The toss would be significant, and nature and the officials were yet to play their part. It would be well soaked grass-covered earth that provides a challenge even greater than that of the ideal swing conditions.

Australia padded up.  Between the toss and the scheduled start of play, the heavens opened. The scribes at CricInfo thought it a “sprinkling of rain”. Thankfully there is Tom Kingham to bear witness. He corrects them. “Raining quite hard” he contradicts them. Spectators scurry for cover in the cold and damp. To Australian eyes, watching from archways or beneath umbrellas, the groundstaff seem to take an age getting on the covers. The wicket is drenched anew and unfit for play.

And then it’s entertainment and the need to satisfy the paying public. And it is umpires somehow oblivious to the conditions or the effect of a heavy shower on an already damp surface who determine that play will start with just a 5 minute delay. And the covers, so gradual in their placement, will be removed forthwith  just ten minutes before the rescheduled starting time. And Geoffrey Boycott will have his dream come true; modern batsmen playing on (effectively) an uncovered wicket. And the ball will talk and have its say. And the bowlers will grin and disbelieve their luck. And this is not fair. Simply not fair. Nor is it fair to accuse batsmen of cowardice or incompetence, and to condemn them in a single breathe.

Batting was difficult after the second hour, but before it was simply impossible. Put straightforwardly, play should not have begun until the wicket had had time to dry.

They are angry in Dressing Room 7. There they have faced these conditions. Or have relished bowling on them. They know the rewards for the effort of digging it in and seeing the ball fizz as if it has grown wings and is flying like the spitting wind, all whizz and lift that’s sheer.

And batsmen know that Shakespeare was a bowler, for who other than a bowler could conclude that “The quality of mercy is not strain’d”, that “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath.” Or believe that “It is twice blest”: blessing “ him that gives and him that takes.”

Fielding In the Deep

The Squire has long believed that God is a cricket tragic.

“And a bowler, Third Man.  Quite obviously a bowler.  You have only to look at the wobble he puts on the orbits of his planets.  Superlative deliveries eon after eon.”

This conversation comes around annually just as our own fair planet moves towards the December solstice.

“Look at that seam position, TM.  23 degrees and 26 minutes. Precision.”

Of course, as a founding member of the Royal Society and an old team mate of Sir Isaac Newton, His Grace might be forgiven for shunning the implications of the Quantum Theorists with their pajamas, white spheres and artificial lighting, but he has a theory for that.

“All came about after The Master retired from the First Class game, TM and started thinking about it instead of just turning at the end of his run, storming in with that perfect glide and bowling the thing.  Too much thought can be a dangerous thing – over complicating matters. Once you start thinking of fermions and photons and bosons, it becomes a very different game.”

The Squire and Third Man were taking a turn about the hothouse looking at the progress of the pineapples destined for the coming seasonal celebrations.

The silence was eventually broken when the Squire admitted, “I’ve been thinking a lot about Iris and of course about dear, dear John.”

By whom he meant Iris Murdoch  and John Bayley .

“They liked their cricket, didn’t they TM.  Bit of a fuss getting them here.  The Bentley and the travel rugs and all the paraphernalia they insisted on bringing. Do you remember?”

“But they loved it when they were here Your Grace, hats and caps and deck chairs.”

“I once scored an effortless century when she was watching, Third Man. In 1978, I think. From the very first delivery, the ball just came off the bat perfectly. Iris gave me a stone by which to remember the day.  Still have it in the Library.  And a copy of ‘The Sea, The Sea.’.   Just published I seem to remember.”

“A difficult book that one, Sir.”

“But rewarding, TM.  I struggled over the first few paragraphs.  Put it down.  Picked it up again and away it went … love, loss, myth and magic.”  

All cricketing themes too, Sir.”

“Yes, indeed, love, loss, magic and myth. And vanity, jealousy and self-deceit.”

“And that old fellow Shakespeare hovering in the background.”

“Like batting at a packed Lord’s in the fresh of the morning with the good Doctor next man in, sitting on the balcony and scowling through his beard, the crowd reserving their full concentration until it was his turn to bat.”

“Started talking like this to Her Grace last night.  Want to know what she said, TM?  ‘And to think, twenty years later and that mind, that personality, that potentiality lost in the transubstantiation of Alzheimer’s disease like the particles in a drop of rain returned to the ocean.’”

Thallata! Thallata!

“Even if readers claim that they ‘take it all with a grain of salt’, they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be ‘true in a way’.”  That conceited bugger, Charles Arrowby, in The Sea, The Sea, p 76