Let us look back to an age when criket Was golden and players good Sports
It was a toss-up for our next object between a cricket boot and a pair of spectacles. In the end we plumped for the boot. Oh, didn’t we mention? The spectacles would have to have been rose tinted, so we could all look back to an age when cricket was golden and players good sports.
Because, according to legend, back in the good old days batsmen did more walking than ramblers. Really? Try telling that to W.G. Grace, one of the game’s biggest cheats, or Gubby Allen, the arch opponent of Bodyline, who once commented ‘between the wars, few batsmen ever walked unless given out’.
Then there was Bradman, the legendary Bradman, who upon retiring reflected: ‘I have the abiding conviction that I played the game as it should have been played.’
In which case, a bit like the umpire in question, let’s give the Don the benefit of the doubt and say that what occurred in the first Ashes Test at Brisbane in November 1946 must have slipped his mind. Having made a scratchy 28 in the first innings against England, Bradman edged a ball from Bill Voce. Bill Edrich, fielding near by, wrote in his memoirs the following year: ‘We heard and saw it hit the upper edge of an almost horizontal bat and go at a tremendous pace towards [Jack] Ikin, who caught it shoulder high at second slip. Time stood still for a momentous half-second of silence while we waited for Bradman to leave, but he stared down on the ground with a black frown… I can only suppose he must have thought that the ball hit the ground after leaving the bat; but every English player thought that it never went within nine inches of the grass.’
A dumbstruck Ikin appealed to the umpire, an Australian, who took the side of Bradman. The Don went on to amass 187 out of 645, leaving Edrich to suggest, ‘had Bradman gone then, I firmly believe the Tests [Australia won the series] would have run a quite different course’.
Walking has often come down to a personal choice, a matter of conscience. Colin Cowdrey had a reputation for walking; so too Peter May, one of England’s great captains of the last fifty years. One of his predecessors, David Sheppard, admitted in an interview with the Independent in 1997 that he had been a non-walker when he first played for England in the early 1950s. Then he began opening the batting for Sussex with John Langridge. ‘I never saw John fail to walk when he knew he had nicked the ball and it was his example that made me say, “That’s what I’ll do”,’ reflected Sheppard.
Playing against Victoria during England’s tour of Australia in the winter of 1962/63, Sheppard walked when he got the lightest of edges on a ball going down the leg side. After the game Sheppard was approached by Jack Fingleton, the former Australia Test batsman turned writer. ‘You made the umpire look silly,’ he told Sheppard. ‘There he was shaking his head and you were walking off.’ Sheppard replied: ‘Then he was a stupid umpire. He should have watched what I was doing.’
Let us look back to an age when criket Was golden and players good Sports
Sheppard, who later became the Bishop of Liverpool, claimed erroneously in that 1997 interview that ‘Australians never walk’. Most don’t, but some have; notably wicketkeeper/batsman Adam Gilchrist, capped ninety-six times between 1999 and 2008. Gilchrist walked during the semifinal of the 2003 World Cup, later explaining in his book Walking the Walk that ‘I felt it was time that players made a stand to take back responsibility for the game’.
Gilchrist’s laudable stance perhaps stemmed from the ruthless approach to the game encouraged by Steve Waugh, the most successful captain in the history of Test cricket with forty-one wins in fifty-seven Tests. The year before Gilchrist’s action, Waugh had stood his ground at Melbourne after edging a ball from England’s Steve Harmison to wicketkeeper James Foster. Waugh survived and used a motoring metaphor to excuse his behaviour. ‘If you’re driving a car over 70 kilometres an hour in a 70 kilometre zone are you going to report yourself to the police station to say you were speeding?’ he retorted to reporters. Then he added: ‘People… as long as I’ve played, they’ve never walked. There have been plenty of instances of that in this match and throughout the series. Players accept that. Umpires are there to make a decision and that’s where I think it should be left.’
Walking has often come down to a personal choice
England captain Nasser Hussain was later described as ‘spewing’ at Waugh’s escape, while the English press rushed to occupy the moral high ground. In their stampede to reach the summit of sportsmanship they overlooked the actions of Michael Vaughan the previous month. The England batsmen had reached 19 when he was involved in a disputed catch at cover point. The Australians felt they’d caught him, Vaughan disagreed, though television replays suggested the Aussies were right.
Vaughan went on to make 177, and when he finally returned to the pavilion he was asked about the catch that never was. ‘There are times as a batsman when you are given out and you aren’t,’ he replied. ‘It’s a tough game.’
Tough as old boots. With or without the walking.