Chelmsford, 16 June 2019
THIS WAS the fifth game Essex would play in the Championship, one behind everyone else bar relegation-threatened Warwickshire. Even allowing for the stagger to unwind, the table looked daunting. Ten Doeschate’s men came into this game lying fourth with 65 points, 10 shy of Yorkshire, 20 adrift of Hampshire and a full 50 points behind a Somerset side who had drawn just one match and won the rest.
The Championship season was only 35 per cent complete but the clock was ticking for Essex in the title race. They had to make a move and the time was now as they would be entertaining the top two in the next 11 days. Given all that, it was surprising to see overseas bowler Peter Siddle rested. Not dropped, not injured, but omitted with a view to his workload and the challenges ahead. This was odd purely because, on such occasions, it is normally easier for sports teams to present an opaque cover story like a virus, strain or ‘niggle’.
Between the home fixtures with Hampshire and Somerset, I had to fly to Poland for a wedding. My flight was on Thursday so the plan was to stack up my emails, meetings and can-I-have-a-job-please coffees on Monday when there was rain around. That would free up Tuesday and possibly Wednesday to concentrate on this game. On the first day, there was also the little matter of India v Pakistan in the World Cup at Old Trafford.
At the start of 2019, Indian batsman Ajinkya Rahane might have still harboured hopes of playing in that fixture, one probably best measured on the Richter Scale. The last of his 90 one-day international appearances had come the previous February but a strike-rate of 78.63 seemed pedestrian these days. Still, with form and injury always fickle, professionals have to assume there is a chance. While I have never met Rahane and have no handle on his character it seems eminently possible he could have been weighed down by ‘what ifs’ on this of all days when the world was watching India. How did he handle his omission? Did he feel his career was sliding? What was the overriding emotion – anger, bitterness, resignation, relief or a determination? As Cricinfo pointed out, on the Saturday before the game he had told his 5.4 million Twitter followers: ‘For positivity in life, you need to have a positive mind!’ What was he feeling on this particular day, in front of a thousand or so at Chelmsford with the booming music from the Essex Pride festival drifting over from Central Park, when he might have been playing in a seismic encounter that received 700,000 ticket requests and had an estimated television audience of 1 billion. And, most pertinently, did all this contribute to his second ball duck on the opening morning and his first-baller in the second innings? My own loss of status had given me a few ‘bad days at the office’ over the years but thank heavens no one was scrutinising me in this way.
Rahane’s dismissal was Porter’s second in his opening 13 balls after a rain-delayed start. In the following over Sam Cook would have Tom Alsop caught to leave Hampshire 8/3. Although Sam Northeast and Rilee Rossouw rallied until lunch, Simon Harmer dismissed them both soon after the restart as the visitors subsided to 70/5 then 118 all out. The South African finished with 5-23. It was becoming a standard statistic for him.
Essex were 147/3 at the close and utterly in control with batting to come so, on the Monday morning, I stayed with my plan to attend on Tuesday. However, they would lose seven wickets for 67 runs before lunch on Monday with Kyle Abbott taking 4-54 including identical leg-cutters just four balls apart to trap Adam Wheater and Simon Harmer in front.
The deficit was only 96 but Hampshire rarely looked like reaching parity after they slumped to 16/4. Porter had Alsop lbw from the fifth ball of his second over to signal lunch. On the resumption, he immediately enticed Rahane to edge behind with his sixth. Sam Cook hobbled off so Harmer was introduced in the fourth over. In the sixth, he induced Northeast down the pitch and Wheater executed the stumping. Two balls later, Rossouw’s agricultural heave was edged to Beard. Hampshire had been missing James Vince and Liam Dawson to England duty but, as their team manager pointed out afterwards, their own culpability was clear. Their two innings lasted less than 64 overs and Weatherley carried his bat in the second innings with just 29, the lowest total with which anyone had achieved that feat in Hampshire’s history.
In the final over, Harmer pitched the ball outside off stump and got it to jag back towards the wicket. Mason Crane thrust his bat down and feathered an inside edge. It bounced off the body of the startled Wheater and the wicketkeeper instinctively thrust out a leg to volley the ball down the pitch. It flew up nicely for ten Doeschate to pouch a simple if bizarre catch running from short leg. Four balls later, Harmer ended the affair by snaring Fidel Edwards lbw.
Afterwards, the Guardian was prophetic. ‘Somerset really can do no wrong! With a week off to contemplate their view from the summit of Division One, they must have been delighted with the news from Chelmsford, where Hampshire, their closest pursuers, were bowled out twice in 64 overs to lose by an innings in a day and a half. The only downside for the runaway leaders is that Simon Harmer’s 12 wickets took Essex into third place, albeit 30 points adrift, but the 2017 champions know what it takes to get over the line. Next week’s match between the two form sides may shape the second half of the season.’
The wedding was lovely, lively and thoroughly soaked in Polish vodka. Having long since left behind the rash of ceremonies you attend in your 30s, this was a relative rarity. I was a work friend of the groom and hardly knew anyone else, therefore it would muster up most of my social acumen not to be a sad solo among the party. Most of the non-family guests were younger and so being the sad, solo, older member of the party would have been worse. The phrase ‘when did you stop dancing?’ always comes back to me at weddings. For a while, I actually thought it was about that pivotal moment when at a social function, you realised your boogying had crossed the crucial line between expressive and embarrassing.
Actually, it is one of four famous questions a shaman might ask a tribesperson if they came to him complaining about being disheartened, disillusioned, dispirited or depressed. The others are: When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence? Supposedly, these four activities are ‘healing salves’ and the cessation of any would lead to a loss of soul.
For the record, I did not dance at the wedding. I had given up all that nonsense around 2005.
‘You play your cricket the way you live your life’
It was a throwaway remark by Shane Warne that I heard on television many years ago but it always stuck with me.
Many people, much more eloquent than I, have written about sport as a simile for the human condition. Most often we talk about the life lessons we can gain from team games – co-operation, communication and working towards long-term shared goals. At grassroots participation level, there is something in it. But in modern, professional sport, you tend to see less virtuous and admirable behaviour the more money is on the table. Football is the world’s most popular game but the conduct of its most expert practitioners, along with those who coach and support them, is often deplorable. When you are young this does not tend to bother you but, as you get older, their manner starts to feel like another reason why the relative civility of county cricket should be cherished all the more.
We need to be realistic – this is all a vast generalisation. There are many noble and gracious people associated with football and some reprobates in cricket with whom you would not want to share slip duty. Also, we have to consider that money makes good people act badly and, yes, there is a class distinction between the games. Yet again, this is not about judgment, just difference. But, having played a similarly poor standard of cricket and football, I would much prefer to spend my time with team-mates from the former. Then again, my own experience suggests perhaps it was not about the people but the sport.
In my late 20s, I played Sunday league football in north London. This was a pretty horrible standard on pretty horrible pitches against some pretty horrible opponents. But, at that age and with my lack of ability, it was the only option if you wanted to play the traditional XI-a-side game. I was short, slow and hardly skilful but my knowledge of the game and speed of thought allowed me to hold down a place in central midfield. This was combative, elbows-out football. You had to stand up for yourself as they would literally stamp all over you when the ref was not looking. It was full of wind-up merchants, shirt-pullers and thugs who spent 90 minutes playing the man not the ball. I was none of those but, to my shame, I was prepared to dispute any decision and pressurise referees and, if possible, bend the rules my way. I would harangue the official over close decisions that might be 70:30 against my team, let alone a 50:50. If, heaven forbid, the referee made an incorrect decision against my side then I would remind him for the remainder of the game. To put it another way, I was gobby with the capacity to be sneaky.
As it happened, my football club ran a cricket team. It was started by ‘old boys’ from the Sunday morning outfit as a means to carry on their sporting endeavours for a few more decades. In April/May and August/September, the football and cricket seasons would overlap so, on weekends when my body and the schedule could stand it, I would shuffle around the midfield for 90 minutes in the morning before keeping wicket in the afternoon. It was the same club and the same me, even some of the same people as a few of us doubled up. But I behaved in an entirely different way.
Yes, I was competitive and audible behind the stumps but this could be described as ‘chirpy’ not ‘gobby’, an important difference. As a wicketkeeper, it was my job to lead the appeals and I took to the role with gusto. But if the umpire made an error or turned me down then all he would get would be a few ‘tuts’. If he gave me out while batting then I would go and if I knew I was out I’d walk. More often than not the umpire would be a member of my team and, yes, if I perceived that he had made a mistake giving me out then there may be a glare, small remark or body language in his direction that breached some ICC code. But this was rare. In the Sunday afternoon, friendly cricket that I played for decades I can only recall these heated exchanges happening on a handful of occasions. With football, it was weekly. Looking back, it is clear the culture of the sport determined my behaviour even when I was playing for the same club on the same day.
But Warne’s comment also resonated in another way. My batting technique was always solid. As a junior, my club sent me to the Essex Cricket School for training. On the day, I found my skills behind many of the other boys. However, I was one of the best in my school and often praised for ‘playing with a straight bat’. This time-honoured cricketing quality marked me down as an opener early on. I took to this role in my school years and early junior cricket as I got sufficient runs. I also possessed more patience and obduracy than most teenagers. Seeing off the opening and, probably best, bowler is a key skill but, after that, you need to score, especially in the men’s Sunday cricket that I played as a teenager. If you were out as soon as you started to accelerate then the scorebook suggested you were just wasting time. This happened too often, and as a result, I went into my shell. I even requested to bat at No 11 for a while. I could spin the ball and, as a left-handed bowler, had offered a little variation in youth cricket. But, yet again, my sporting temperament let me down. I just could not handle being carted all over the ground, a fate that every bowler will suffer and a junior spinner will have to endure more often than most. The son of Essex all-rounder Stuart Turner sent me to all corners in a youth game and, in truth, I am not sure my bowling ever recovered.
Wicketkeeping seemed a decent alternative and placed you at the centre of the game. I found I was pretty good at it, more than adequate for the league cricket I played in Sussex and Hampshire in my 20s. However, for me, wicketkeeping was something to pass the time before I batted. That was the point of playing. Yet, as I got older, I began to tense up. At the end of my time, I dreaded batting or even turning out on a Sunday. Quite why I felt any pressure in these knockabout games I do not know. But the number of 30-minute, single-figure scores I endured does not reflect the semi-decent club cricketer I could have been. Certainly, a more laissez-faire view of my own endeavours would have given me more enjoyment.
I batted with a refusal to take real risk. I liked to think I was looking for the percentage shot but, in truth, I got more timid and fearful as I got older. Ditto this for real life too, with some notable exceptions. I could handle pressure, regularly fending off bouncers, close fielders and the odd sledge, but I had an unfortunate capacity to effectively get out to the ball before the one that got me out. A huge let-off or an unusual event would spook me and I would over-react mentally. I was hit on the heart by a sharply rising ball in a league game in Hampshire and struggled for breath for a few minutes. I refused to go off but fell to the oldest trick in the book, the yorker, a ball later. On numerous occasions, I would withstand a huge appeal or come close to being dismissed from one ball, only to somehow contrive to get out the next. This ability to over-react has also followed me in real life, though the last few years has led to a reasonable improvement.
Essentially, cricket is an individual sport within a team context. Batsmen and bowlers take the stage solo, although there are ten others in your supporting cast and you have to spend your fair share of the game out of the spotlight. Their success and failure is largely but not wholly dependent on their own efforts. This is why so many post-match conversations in the bar after club games are essentially self-centred dialogues disguised as two-way discourse. Everyone wants to talk about their own part in the game and gauge other’s opinions. But that other party is themselves wrapped in their own contribution too. It always made for stilted conversation. There is probably a Two Ronnies sketch in the way team-mates steer their beery chats towards their own tale of heroism.
Not that I revelled in the social side of the game. Again, reflecting life, I became less social as the years went on. Once I had ‘done my bit’ in putting the sight screens away or collecting the boundary flags I’d be looking to shower, change and leave.
My retirement from playing cricket came in my mid-30s. By this time, I was married with a job that involved constant weekend work. When my first child came along it seemed selfish to spend most of my only day off playing a game I had ceased to really enjoy. My wicketkeeping was good but I was far from the batsman I wanted to be. Too slow, too ponderous but, let us be honest, probably just not good enough. I was holding myself up in comparison to the player I might have been. The teenager with potential, the one with a decent eye and a solid defensive game. It is stupid to think back on it now but I was starting to hope for rain on Sundays so my games were cancelled.
I picked up the team’s scorebook at the end of one game and saw, alongside my pitiful one-figure total, that someone had scrawled ‘IN 30 MINUTES’. Again, perhaps it is oversensitivity, but I made my excuses and left in silence at the end of the game.
It just so happened that my father died at around the same time and, in my mind, I linked the two events. He was the only person who seemed bothered whether I played cricket or not. Arthritis had ended his playing days early and so he had always advised me to keep putting on my whites for as long as I could. But this infuriating game continually exposed personal frailties in a way I did not like. I could not just enjoy it for itself, I had invested too much of my sporting ambition in being a competent cricketer. That was just not working any more.
So, in direct opposition to his wishes, after that game, I never picked up a bat again.