I love journalists who write really well about cricket. The current crop contains a few gems, a few good ones and a swathe of also rans.
One of the current gems is ex-England captain, Michael Atherton. In today’s Times he writes about the current Pakistan leg spinner, Yasir Shah, drawing comparisons with Shane Warne, the all time master of the leggie’s art. He introduces the reader to the fact that the Old Trafford pitch (the sight of tomorrow’s Test) has always been a friend to a leg spinner, using this example, which I hope my retyping doesn’t contravene any copyright rules:
“Think, obviously, of the Shane Warne fizzer to Mike Gatting in 1993, when England’s Henry VIII lookalike, and thought of as a king of batsmen against spin, was left bemused by the seemingly impossible geometry of Warne’s drift and turn, as the ball moved one way in the air and then another off the pitch. Gatting wandered off looking like a bear who had had his porridge removed from under his nose.”
Firstly, Atherton doesn’t assume that all of his readers are experts, one of the arts of a good sportswriter. Secondly, you can almost see the mischievous twinkle in his eye as he wrote that final sentence, well aware of Gatting’s fearsome reputation at the dinner table. Wonderful.
Gooch, who has never been noted for his wicked humour, said about that ball at the time, “If it had been a cheese roll, it would never have got past him”
In the aftermath of Gatting’s barmaid incident, Ian Botham suggested that it couldn’t have been Gatt as anything sent to his hotel room after 9pm got eaten.
I think Warne has stated that the ball was a fluke. He had something else in mind.
yeah he bowled a lot of flukes over his career.
Very true.
I think the best cricket writer is Aussie Gideon Haigh
The best and wittiest current writer, agreed on that. However, born in the U.K with one English parent so you can’t totally claim him.
Many a Slip had me crying with laughter. Anyone who’s ever played competitive cricket will read it cover to cover in one sitting.
Stephen Brenkley & Mike Selvey are always worth reading.
Shame thegrauniad are dispensing with Selvey in September. I like his writing, and Vic Marks too.
The finger being raised for Selvey ? That’s terrible news !!
Selvey to make the lonely trudge back to the pavilion? That’s outrageous. I’m in shock!
Wasn’t aware of that at all ……..a great shame.
http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/mike-selvey-leaving-the-guardian/2016/07/20/
Bad news, but as I haven’t bought the newspaper in about 5 years (while reading it nearly every day), I guess I am partly culpable.
Let’s have a look at that wicket again
Incredible
I think we all know this is actually the ball of the century
Atherton writes with some authority on this, as he was out a couple of balls earlier.
The best descriptive writing of this incident must surely be from Neil Hannon, who evokes the moment beautifully, gets all the obligatory Fat Gat jokes in, and has the temerity to set the whole thing to music. Genius.
‘Twas the first test of the Ashes Series 1993.
Australia had only managed 289 and we
felt all was going to plan
that first innings at Old Trafford.
Then Merv Hughes and his handlebar moustache
dismissed poor Athers.
I took the crease to great applause
and focussed on me dinner.
I knew that I had little cause
to fear their young leg spinner.
He loosened up his shoulder
and, with no run-up at all,
he rolled his right arm over
and he let go of the ball.
It was jiggery pokery, trickery, jokery,
How did he open me up?
Robbery, muggery, Aussie skull-duggery,
Out for a buggering duck.
What a delivery.
I might as well have been,
holding a contra bassoon.
Jiggery Pokery who was this nobody
making me look a buffoon?
Like a blithering old buffoon.
At first the ball looked straight enough
I had it in me sights,
but such was its rotation
that it swerved out to the right.
I thought ‘Well, that’s a leg break.
That’s easily defended.’
So I stuck my left leg out
and jammed my bat against it.
But the ball it span obscenely
and out of the rough it jumped,
veered back across my bat and pad
clipping my off stump.
It took a while to hit me,
I momentarily lingered.
But then I saw old Dickie Bird
slowly raise his finger.
It was jiggery pokery, trickery, jokery.
How did he open me up?
Robbery, muggery, Aussie skull-duggery.
Out for a buggering duck.
What a delivery.
I might as well have been
holding a child’s balloon.
Jiggery Pokery, who was this nobody
making me look a buffoon?
Like an accident-prone buffoon.
How such a ball could be bowled
I don’t know, but if you asked me
if it had been a cheese roll,
it would never have got past me.
Yeah, I really like that Duckworth-Lewis song, too, but there’s one crucial error in it.
In the song, “Mike Gatting” declares several times that he was “out for a buggering duck”, when in fact, I think I’m right in saying, Gatting made a total of 4 on that day at Old Trafford.
And why would Dickie have raised his finger if he was clean bowled?
Great song though. Both the DLM albums are tremendous.
Possibly to confirm that the ball was a good one i.e. not a no ball and you are definitely out?
Probably because the incompetent old fool (Bird that is, not Gatt!) couldn’t bear not being the centre of attention. I’ve spent enough time at Headingley seeing him walking round in desperate search for an audience to have developed an almost pathological dislike of him. I just cannot understand why people seem so willing to indulge him.
I recall an interview with Neil Hannon about this song and whilst appreciating the affection that fans had for it, he was concerned that it was a little bit ‘Richard Stilgoe’.
Cricket is undoubtedly blessed with wonderful writing and commentary but having been driven away from The Independent by the switch to online only, the quality in The Times with Atherton and Mike Brearley has eased the pain somewhat.
But I have had too send an admonitory e-mail to The Cricketer magazine this month in response to Michael Henderson’s ridiculous suggestion that “Joni Mitchel didn’t write many good songs….” You can see why he makes a living writing on cricket, rather than on music!
Not the first time Michael Henderson has written a pile of complete shite. Horrid reactionary of the worst order.
“I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing God ever created on earth” — Harold Pinter
I always liked the great Bill “Tiger” O’Reilly, who wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald. In his day he was a great spin bowler in the Bradman era, although he and the Don famously didn’t get along. His writing was blunt and to the point, very entertaining. He hated one-day cricket, God knows what he would have thought of 20/20.
I love cricket and cricket writing, but my favourite piece is a poem by Kit Wright, skewering Boycott, Emburey, Gooch et al for their involvement in the 1982 rebel tour of South Africa:
I Found South African Breweries Most Hospitable
Meat smell of blood in locked rooms I cannot smell it,
Screams of the brave in torture loges I never heard nor heard of
Apartheid I wouldn’t know how to spell it,
None of these things am I paid to believe a word of
For I am a stranger to cant and contumely.
I am a professional cricketer
My only consideration is my family.
I get my head down nothing to me or mine
Blood is geysering now from ear, from mouth, from eye,
How they take a fresh guard after breaking the spine,
I must play wherever I like or die
So spare me your news your views spare me your homily.
I am a professional cricketer
My only consideration is my family.
Electrodes wired to their brains they should have had helmets,
Balls wired up they should have been wearing a box,
The danger was the game would turn into stalemate,
Skin of their feet burnt off I like thick woollen socks
With buckskin boots that accommodate them roomily
For I am a professional cricketer.
My only consideration is my family.
They keep falling out of the window they must be clumsy
And unprofessional not that anyone told me,
Spare me your wittering spare me your whimsy,
Sixty thousand pounds is what they sold me
And I have no brain. I am an anomaly.
I am a professional cricketer.
My only consideration is my family.
I think some of the best books about cricket are Peter Tinniswood’s ‘Brigadier. . .’ series.
The Brigadier lives in the village of Witney Scrotum, which shelters in the lee of the ‘massive buttresses of Botham’s Gut’. A village where Squire Brearley keeps a watchful eye on Gooch the blacksmith, and Miss Roebuck from the dog biscuit shop. Poor Miss Roebuck, infatuated with Colin Dredge.
A bit dated in some respects, as the cricketers featured have long since retired, but the surreal humour still works – a bit Douglas Adams, a bit Terry Pratchett and a bit P.G Wodehouse.
I am lucky enough to live near Lord’s and slip in from time to time to watch whatever cricket is on.
Even before living so close, I have been a frequent visitor to the ground and have seen many epic encounters and a famous occasion or two.
My favourite time to go these days is mid week when some non-descript county match is being played out. I sit quietly and observe like some ghost of the ghosts that Francis Thompson recalled in his poem At Lord’s:
For the field is full of shades as I near a shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host
As the run stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro:
O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!
The smaller the ball, the better the sports writing. Never truer than of cricket.
Small balls? I like the theory. Baseball yes. Cricket yes. Golf, smaller yet – yes. Table tennis – not so much.