On a gloriously sunny afternoon, I caught up with Stan Cullimore, probably most well known for his time in The Housemartins. Since the chart topping band split up, he has filled his time with many things. Most recently as a travel journalist, zipping here and there and sharing many an amusing story.
Although The Housemartins were famously from Hull, Stan has lived in Bristol for many years and from time to time he has been known to wander along, to watch Gloucestershire in action.
Unlike some of the other interviews that I have posted, Stan isn’t a cricket fanatic. He does though have a lovely take on the game, and what it can offer us. Showing that Cricket isn’t just about Test matches, County games or franchise Cricket. There is a different, simpler, enjoyment to be had. For example, I normally chat about a favourite player that someone has. In Stan’s case I genuinely think that his favourite player is the next one he sees. That could be in the park or at the Seat Unique Stadium. I find that very refreshing.
Thanks for your time Stan.
Hi Stan, what are your first memories of cricket?
Well, this might be a false memory, as they often are. I was born in a tiny village called Stapleford, just outside Cambridge. Funnily enough I was there recently and visited the house that I was born in. I have memories of growing up in that village. We actually moved away when I was 8, or 10. When I was young, we used to go and play on the piles of sugar beets, like some old fashioned image of growing up in the countryside. I think that whilst we were there I saw cricket being played on the Village Green. I’m not going to pretend that I knew anything about it, but since then I’ve always had a nice feeling about the game.
It’s like when you are on a train and your go past a cricket ground. Someone running up to bowl and literally, your heart goes “Ahhhhh!” As I say, I can’t be totally certain, but we used to walk through school through fields and across a steam. So in some ways we had this idyllic countryside village upbringing. So I’m guessing that village cricket would have played a part in that.
Did you play at all as a youngster?
No, we left that there when I was around 10 and moved to Birmingham. When I went to secondary school I had glasses so I was rubbish at batting. But I could bowl because I suppose you didn’t really need to be able to see. You knew where the wicket was. That wasn’t moving! Also weirdly, I was quite good at fielding. But as I say, absolutely rubbish at batting.
My memory is that I really enjoyed playground cricket but I was never picked for the teams. It was a rugby and cricket school, but cross-country running was my thing during those years. I do have another memory though. One of my mates had a fantastic Grandma that we used to go and see. She was brilliant. One of those people who say things like “The country’s going to the dogs. Mind you, it was going to the dogs when I was a little girl. That was a long time ago!”
Anyway, Grandma Maisie lived in a flat that was very near Edgbaston Cricket Ground, maybe even overlooked it. So, we used to go past the ground and you’d hear the clapping and the occasional roar. It was very exciting, but we never went in to see a game. It may be another false memory though. I can’t be sure.
Did anyone in the family play cricket?
No, not that I can remember. We weren’t a sporting family. We were all into music, we had a piano and a guitar in the house, so we all did that.
Would you have watched cricket on TV?
We didn’t have a television until I was quite old. And it wasn’t until I went to university that I saw my first colour television properly. In the first year, we all clubbed together and rented one, as you did then. I remember just sitting there watching snooker in colour, thinking, “Oh my God, this amazing. When they talk about the pink ball, I now know what they are talking about. It suddenly all made sense!
So actually, the thing about cricket for me has always been. My memory is not playing, and not watching a game on TV, or even listening to the Test Matches in those days.
It was that thing of seeing a game being played. My eldest brother was really interested in archaeological remains, so we’d go on these long walks through the countryside, looking for a mound, so accidently coming across a game was great.
I remembered that at school, although I never played for the team, we were allowed to watch it when the school was playing, and I loved it. I used to sit in the shade, watching schoolboy cricket. It was just a gorgeous way to spend the day. You weren’t having to do any schoolwork, as you had Wednesday afternoon off to watch the cricket. I just thought, I want my life to be more like this please.
Thinking about seeing a bowler running in, as you speed past a field on a train, or a bus, or car. I always hope that you get to see ball being bowled, the batter playing their shot. That’s enough. You don’t need to see the whole game. You had watched cricket. You don’t need to know who wins.
Yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head. The whole point of cricket, though it sounds a cliché. It’s not about the winning or losing. Obviously, it’s nice when I watch Gloucestershire playing and they do win. Sometimes it goes down to last ball and they win. Which is great. But even if it comes down to the last ball and they don’t win, it doesn’t break my heart. You’ve seen a good game. It hard to explain but to me it’s a sport where winning is nice, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t win. You go away thinking, “Well that was a nice way to spend my time.”
I’m exactly in that camp. Unfortunately, as money gets more important, that feels like it’s slipping away.
The past couple of seasons have been pretty dreadful for Gloucestershire, in terms of results. Yet I’ve loved my time watching games. It’s a great place to watch people, The play gradually unfolds in front of you. Your team can go from being in a bad position to a good one over a couple of hours without you really noticing the change that’s taking place.
You’re right. My son has one of those flats that overlooks the ground. If they are playing, he will send me a text saying “Dad they’re playing today, Do you want to pop up?” and if the sun’s shining, I’ll pop up there, sit on the balcony, have a cup of tea. Watch it for an hour or two. Have a bit of a chit chat, some other friends of his come in, you chat with them. People come and go. It’s a really nice background “thing”. Which you can focus on, if you choose to.
Almost a bit like radio in a way. You can have it noodling away in the background, then something will draw you in. Then off you go again. Cricket can be like that. And that’s fine.
Yes.
Is your son more engaged with cricket than you?
Well, he was never a cricket fan before he moved in. Long story! But it is a nice thing, it does draw you in. We watch the Western Storm women’s games and the young cricketers as well. I tell you what, I even enjoy watching the Ground staff dealing with the ground. Watching the various machines, those that water it, those that dry it, all sorts goes on.
Also, liking birds as I do, it’s a great place to watch them, when no game is taking place. All sorts of wildlife uses the place. There are foxes that wander across at specific times. I also love that huge digital clock that you can see from my son’s living room. No need to look at your watch up there.
There was an odd thing recently. My son had been away on holiday with us, a friend stayed in his flat whist we were away. When we got home, we took his bags upstairs and there’s a cricket ball on the dining room table. No sign of how it got there, or of any damage outside from it’s impact. Apparently, the person staying found on the balcony. Not sure if it was from a game or a practice session. A real shame though that he wasn’t there to see it. Maybe even catch it.
It’s still a peripheral thing for him. But lots of his mates are really into cricket and it’s great when they point out something.
To me it’s a game that invites conversation, something that you’ve obviously experienced. There are those though who love to go along a sit on their own all day.
Yes, they’re like fishermen. They have those weird big hats, flasks, and sandwiches. Do you go on your own?
Normally there will be at least 3 of us. Sometimes as many as 12-15 depending on who’s working or on holiday. Those days with lots of people can be fabulous days, lots of chat and laughter. If Glos do manage a win, it’s a nice feeling. Sometimes you are alongside people for a day, have a lovely time and you never come across them again. I think that’s great as well.
It’s an interesting contrast with the people you see leaving the football. They often seem pissed and lairy.
Ah yes, great band name!
Yes, what would their hits be? “My heads sore!”
But the cricket lot, they just seem really nice.
Do you think your involvement with cricket will change?
I don’t think so. I’m happy with way things work at the moment. I’d like more gigs to go on there, and the drone show last Christmas was great. It would be good if they could keep playing in Bristol rather than move out of town
.
(Stan has some money saving advice, from his Housemartins days, for the Glos players when it comes to away games)
But with regard cricket itself, I love just casually catching a game. We were on narrowboat holiday a few years ago up north, stopped and walked into town and there was a cricket ground on the way. So, we just stopped and watched that for a while. It’s a really nice thing to do.
Quite therapeutic
I agree. I think it’s a Mindful thing. Because I’m not attached to the result, I’m just enjoying the experience. And to say again, watching someone run up, deliver a ball, which looks quite relaxed from a distance, though not if you are facing it. I just like it. It’s just a nice thing. All those people around the world that find new ways to be nasty to each other, they should all just play cricket.
Thanks to Stan for popping over and sitting in our house, when he could have been out in the sunshine.
Colin Babb has written “1973 and Me” a fascinating book that talks about the influence that the 1973 West Indies tour of England had on him, and the wider community of Caribbean people in the UK.
It’s much than that though. Providing an insight into the day-to-day life of Colin, his family and his school friends. He describes himself as “BBC” a British Born Caribbean and this book opens the door to his life in London. That includes football, music, food and politics, making for a very entertaining and informative read.
Colin Babb at West Indies v India T20I at the National Stadium , Providence, Guyana, August 6 2023
Thanks for finding the time to have this chat Colin. The first thing that I wanted to ask is, how old were you in 1973?
I was eight, going on nine, born in the mid 60’s. At the time I was living in an area of South London called Streatham, with my great grandmother who was from Guyana, my mother who was also from Guyana and my father, who was from Barbados. We were living in a housing association flat/maisonette. We lived upstairs, there was initially a Jamaican family living downstairs. When they moved out, then a Guyanese lady moved in.
It was a fairly mixed street. We had an Irish family to our left, a Jewish family to our right, with a general mixture of working class and lower middle-class English, Scottish, Irish and West Indian.
I was at a talk a while back where the footballer Liam Rosenoir, spoke about the eclectic mix of backgrounds in his part of London when he was growing up. He went to talk about the way that they would come together at weekends for parties at his parents house.
I would say that our community wasn’t always friendly. There were tensions between the different groups. We didn’t always get on, as kids we had our little differences with each other. But, by and large, we held it together. You know that wherever you go in the world, there isn’t a place on the planet where people aren’t divided by things such as religion, money, class, language, territory, history, politics, race. We are always divided by something, because we are tribal.
You spoke earlier of your great grandmother and the rest of your family. Were they cricket fans?
I would say that my great grandmother was not particularly interested. My mother wasn’t either. My father was, and I probably took a lot of influence from him. Although I was evolving into a cricket fan myself, both consciously and subconsciously. When I was growing up, we used to sometimes have gatherings at our flat, my friends or family would come over. They would be from different parts of the Caribbean, Guyanese, Bajans, Trinidadians, Dominicans all around the region with different racial backgrounds. Cricket was often the talk of the day.
So, I heard a lot about Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith, also going back to the days of Learie Constantine, Ramadhin and Valentine, Weekes, Worrell and Walcott. I hadn’t seen them play, but I’d heard about them, they were in my subconscious just through being talked about in the house.
I was living in an interesting social setting, where I felt very West Indian, because I was brought up in a West Indian household. But when I left the house, I felt West Indian, I never felt British and I think the West Indies team reinforced that with trips over here every three or four years. It was a way of connecting with “back home” for some of my parents family and the rest of us who were longing for home but couldn’t get there enough. So, when the team came, that was our connection with home. This was one of the reasons why the grounds were filled by West Indians. Many of whom, were not cricket fans but it was a great social occasion.
It was emblematic of the culture that they had left behind.
Yes. Mike Phillips, the Guyanese cricket writer said to me once, that cricket was a unifying force, and also a dividing force between the West Indians and the English. It was something that they could hold onto together. They both came from cricket loving communities. Yet, they didn’t always get on with each other during, or after a match. But there was a connection there, and a weird sort of appreciation as well.
A lot of West Indians revered Dickie Bird the umpire for example. My Dad would have conversations with him from our sofa when we were watching cricket on TV in the 70’s. If Dickie Bird didn’t give a decision that my dad expected, let’s say Keith Boyce appealing for LBW against Dennis Amiss, he’d shout out “Dickie, Stick your finger up!”
Some gentle words of advice!
Yes, exactly.
Did any of your family play club cricket?
Not that I’m aware of. Though my father had a friend who briefly played for Gloucestershire, it’s in the book! My father was at school with Keith Boyce, but as I’m aware there wasn’t anyone in the family that played to a high standard. Most of the family that were in Britain, especially the men who were Guyanese were though, very connected with cricket.
Did the West Indies tour of 1973 prompt you to start playing? Did you have the chance to play in school?
Yes, I did play, though there wasn’t a formal structure around playing games through my primary state schools. We just had cricket practise, and lads versus Dad’s matches. Then there were after school games between ourselves, that a teacher would organise. At my secondary school we had some friendly matches against other schools. None of us attended private cricket clubs, I wouldn’t have even known what they were. The only clubs I knew, were West Indian clubs, which I occasionally went to watch matches at.
I didn’t meet anyone who went to a fee-paying school until I went to university and work. I first started playing cricket in a Sunday league team when I was about 19 or 20, with a friend of mine. Almost the entire team were private school guys. So it’s through cricket that I had a connection with that kind of world.
Interestingly, about 3 or 4 years after those Test games in 1973 I ended up playing at The Oval!
Wow!
I’d joined the Boys Brigade, which was like a more formal version of Scouts. I’d joined after meeting a friend on the street, who said he went as they used to run around playing games, sounded great to me. So, I joined as well. Then I discovered that they met in a hall that was literally at the top of my street, which I hadn’t been aware of. Then I found out that they had a cricket team for under 11’s. I ended up being the captain, opening bowling and opening batsman. I just wanted to do everything!
Then I joined the seniors as one of the youngest players. I didn’t really do much batting then. Came in at 9,10 or 11 in fact, hardly ever came in. If I did, I was just holding up one end. Probably bowled about 3 overs in the whole season but I was included in the final of the cup competition. It was a London wide Boys Brigade under 18’s cup and the final was at The Oval. I batted at either 8 or 9. I got a duck! But we won the cup!
We used about half the ground, as The Oval is huge. I couldn’t throw the ball to the wicket keeper as he was so far away. I threw the ball to someone else, who then threw it to the Keeper. I really couldn’t understand how someone could really engage with the game if you were fielding on the boundary in a proper first-class game, you are so far away.
I noticed that the first Test of that West Indies series was played at The Oval. I tend to think of it as the location for the final Test of the summer.
Yes, it was only a three-match series that year. The West Indies did though play the majority of the counties on that tour, as there was more time in the schedules.
I really miss the days when the touring teams would go around the counties, giving everyone the chance to see these great players.
Yes, it’s such a shame that it doesn’t happen anymore. There are new competitions and more international cricket these days. We’ve just had The Australians here, no real warm up games for them. It’s the modern way. I do miss the old touring schedule. That West Indies tour in ’73 started against Essex at Chelmsford and went around the country from there.
When you were sitting down to watch the Test games on TV, was that a family event, or would you be watching it on your own?
It was mainly me. Dad would have been working. He was in the army, so away a lot. He was though around that summer, which I remember very well. Generally watched during the day, as they always seemed to be played during school holidays. Now if there does happen to be a Test out of term time, it’s on Sky, so lots of kids can’t see it! It used to be so easy when it was on the BBC as part of the licence fee. You got up, got ready for Soul Limbo by Booker T & the M.G’s and you’d watch every ball.
If it got a little boring, I’d go upstairs and listen to it on the radio, or maybe pop out and play with my friends for a short while. When I got older though, I’d watch every ball, either with my father or by myself. My mother didn’t watch it. My grandmother would sit there and look as though she was watching. But wasn’t really doing so. She did though make the odd comment. Although the two of them weren’t really cricket fans, they always wanted the West Indies to win. It meant a lot to the Caribbean community.
And this is a myth I’d like to bust. Certainly, in the Caribbean community in the 70’s, not everyone was a cricket fan, some liked it, some didn’t. But that cricket culture was so strong that even if you weren’t a cricket fan, you’d watch it on TV, or even go to the ground, to be part of something. I’ve heard stories of people going to places like Trent Bridge, The Oval, Lords or Edgbaston and meeting people that they went to primary school with back home in the Caribbean, probably not knowing that the other person had moved to Britain as well. It was that kind of experience. A great outdoor meeting place, a place to socialise. You’d have people selling little plastic tubs of rum, a guy outside The Oval selling vinyl records, a thriving business. Some people would share their food round. It’s making me feel hungry just talking about it!
When I used to go to watch the West Indies in 1976 or 1980, I would go with my father, or friends. It would be a mixed crowd, some West Indians, some English, we were all friends. We’d watch the match together, hanging out, having fun. There wasn’t any racial tension between us, or hostility. As we got older, you wanted to get on the pitch, touch the ball, throw it back, get on the TV.
Funny enough I was looking of some old footage this of the first Test in 1973, loads of kids running on to the field to congratulate Clive Lloyd on his century, when he’d only reached 99!
Yes, that’s in the book. It’s noticeable when you watch clips from that time, that a lot of 4’s weren’t really 4’s as the ball didn’t reach the rope before some youngster picked it up! Sometimes the crowd fielding was immaculate, you wouldn’t get away with it now.
There’s that famous Lancashire v. Gloucestershire Gillette Cup semi-final from 1971, sometimes the ball is in the air heading towards a fielder, kids are running past him as he gets ready to take the catch!
Yes, I write about that game in the book! The reason I did so, was that the book covers the 70’s in general. That was probably the first game that I can remember watching. For some reason it sticks in my brain. I remember Procter annoying the crowd. I remember the darkness and David Hughes (Lancs) hitting the ball everywhere.
Thinking about West Indies players from that 1973 team, wow what a list of great names. Rohan Kanhai, Clive Lloyd, Gary Sobers, Roy Fredericks, Vanburn Holder, Alvin Kallicharan, Keith Boyce and more. Incredible players, were there any particular ones that you gravitated towards?
For me it was the Guyanese players, having the family connection with the country, I gravitated toward them. There were six Guyanese players in the squad in 1973: Steve Camacho, who got injured in a county tour match v Hampshire, so didn’t play in a Test, Kallicharan, Fredericks, Gibbs, Lloyd and Kanhai. So a heavyweight line-up from the Guyanese. Not only that, Kanhai was captain and Gibbs was the vice-captain. So, I think that’s what attracted me to this side.
Also leading up to the ’73 tour, I was arguably more interested in football. But two things lead me into cricket, that ’73 tour and the John Player League because it was free to watch on the TV on a Sunday. It was my introduction to the game; I learnt a lot. It was my learning tool about the game, I really enjoyed watching it. My football was Match of the Day on a Saturday evening, my cricket was the John Player Leagues on a Sunday. Weekend sorted.
The John Player League introduced me to a lot of West Indian players, so I got to know them really through that competition, and those great Gillette Cup matches. Lloyd at Lancashire, Holder at Worcestershire, Warwickshire had a serious West Indian collection, Fredericks at Glamorgan, John Shepherd at Kent, I guess those were my learning years.
One of the reasons I wrote about this tour though was that when you look back, the West Indies hadn’t won a Test series between 1968-73, they’d lost or drawn them. After this tour, they were unbeaten in England until the early 90’s. So what I’m trying to say in this book, is that the role of Kanhai was pivotal in changing West Indian fortunes but has not been recognised. Also the ’73 tour is not discussed. People talk about the “grovel” tour and the “blackwash” tour but not this one.
Also, I wanted to write about the lead up to the ’73 tour. The 60’s was a great time for West Indian cricket in this country, it’s not talked about enough. You could argue that the role that Frank Worrell had when he leads the team in 1963, was actually far more important than what Lloyd did in 1976. It seems that it’s just not really mentioned. Going further back I write about other factors in the build-up to 1973. The great win in 1950 the first time the West Indies had won a series in England. Also 1963 when the West Indies won here, 1966 when they won here again. Then the disappointment of 1969 when they lost. I think it’s important for the book to give people an historic context for the tour in ’73.
Isn’t it odd how you form opinions about people that you never meet. Rohan Kanhai, much like Mike Brearley, always struck me as an intellectual figure. He didn’t really look like a sportsman, if that makes sense. He could have been your Geography teacher; he had that sort of calm authority about him. Clive Lloyd obviously did a great job as captain, Kanhai though just seemed a bit more professorial.
The thing about Kanhai, was that he was the first Guyanese to captain a West Indies team through an entire series. That was an historical moment, which I feel attached to. Also, he was the first West Indian of Indian heritage to captain the West Indies. Really very important, especially when you look at the political turmoil in Guyana in the 60’s and 70’s. The racial, political, economic and social divisions at that time were very problematic. I think it’s important, when I look at that squad, to highlight the fact that it was a multiracial one. People like Kallicharan and Kanhai were of India heritage. Some of African heritage: Gibbs, Lloyd and Fredericks. Then Camacho, who was of Portuguese heritage. So it was a mixture of people and cricket is one of the few ways that the Caribbean can showcase the different ethnic makeup of the region. Let’s not forget Tony Cozier the journalist and commentator, who shocked many people when he appeared on TV for the first time in England. People had assumed that he was not white. Cricket is one of the few avenues where people can get, not just into the soul of the Caribbean, but also an idea of what it actually looks like. I think the ’73 squad did that unintentionally but very well.
The book itself though isn’t just about cricket. It’s about football, comedy and much more from that period.
Picture of Radio Times taken from Colin’s book
The West Ham footballer Clyde Best is featured in the book. Certainly a player I remember from his days at West Ham. A fine footballer, and a brave man who was very much at the forefront of things as one of the few black footballers at that time.
Yes, he was at the forefront. I interviewed him for the book, and was also involved in a documentary made by a Bermudian TV company about him, which is hopefully coming out next year. His father was a cricket connoisseur and he passed that onto Clyde. When he was younger, he was quite a decent cricketer. There’s more about him the book, so you’ll have to read it!
You mentioned food earlier. From your memory was food an integral part of the whole cricket experience?
Yes, bringing your own food and drink was part of it. Once the cans of drink had been emptied, you would use them to make a rhythmic noise! Actually, that wasn’t such a big thing in ’73, more so in ’76, that and 1980 saw more of the can banging experience. 1973 was more about the crowd invasion side of things. In fact I think that at Edgbaston they may have put a fence up to deter people. Back at Lord’s though, people were coming back on the pitch again. Not just West Indians by the way, England fans were doing it as well. Mainly young boys. There was a great bit of commentary regarding that invasion when Clive Lloyd got to that 99 you mentioned earlier. I think it was by Alan Gibson, when he says “And some of these older boys really should know better!” Absolutely fantastic, sort of telling them off like a head teacher would.
You’ve given me a much greater understanding of the importance of this tour. What do you think that the impact was on the Caribbean community in the London area, and indeed the wider diaspora of the UK?
The reason why this tour was unique, was that by the early 1970’s we had an established Caribbean community in Britain. Not just in London, but in our major cities. Also, the emergence of a second generation, not only were they born here but they were coming to an age where they began to appreciate cricket (or not), and also young people who came here with their families. So, you had a first- and second-generation connection, which I don’t think was a strong in the 1960’s. So, whether or not you had a strong relationship with your family as a West Indian born here, or growing up here, you could make that relationship through cricket. Everybody wanted the West Indies to win, regardless of you being a cricket connoisseur, or not.
There was a way of connecting generations. You saw that in the ’73 tour, a lot of young people, mainly boys, and their fathers, uncles or aunties celebrating cricket, or going together just because it’s a day out. In those days, when you were growing up, virtually everybody had a connection with the cricket community, regardless of them liking the game, or not. They wanted the West Indies to win.
Also what was important about this tour, and the rest of the 70’s and the 60’s, was that cricket unified people from the Caribbean. For those 5 days at the Test match, it didn’t necessarily matter if you were from Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados or Guyana. We all wanted the West Indies to win.
The book as a whole though is not just about cricket. It’s about growing up, it’s about nostalgia, it’s about family and migration. Also comedy, television, music, football even Sacha Distel gets a mention! There are elements about racism that I had to battle with, but there’s humour in there as well.
Also, it’s not just my story, there are lots of other people stories as well. They talk of their memories of what life was like at that time and the impact that cricket had on them.
There is a Q&A with Dickie Bird, and pieces on Inshan Ali and Ron Headley. It was great to talk to so many people when putting this book together. In total I interviewed 60 people, doing that was the back rock of this book and a great thing to do. The likes of Frank Hayes and Dennis Amiss, gave me their time as well. It was a wonderful experience.
Thank you so much for your time Colin. The book is a fabulous read, and will trigger many memories for those of a certain age. Plenty in there for younger readers as well, it will certainly give you an understanding of life in 1970’s Britain.
You can buy the book, and find further information from Colin’s website:
Next up for a chat on cricket is Chris Geddes. Since 1996 Chris has been a key part of the much-loved Scottish band Belle And Sebastian. In that time, they have released 12 studio albums, several film soundtracks, various compilations and toured around the world playing to thousands of fans.
They famously upset pop producer Pete Waterman in 1999, when they pipped his proteges Steps to the Best Newcomer Award at The Brits. Something with caused a great deal of hilarity at the time.
As well as playing keyboards in the band, Chris can often be found DJ’ing both in Glasgow and further afield. If you click on the final link, it will take you to a recent interview where Chris discussed his musical journey and selects some recent favourites.
B&S drummer Richard Colbourn and Chris, during a break their in DJ work at the CCA in Glasgow in 2014.
Hi Chris, thanks for finding the time to chat with me. Let’s go way back, what is your first memory of cricket?
My first cricket memory is actually from before I have any genuine memories, but it’s something I remember because the newspaper cuttings are in my earliest scrapbook, from when I was a kid. It’s Gloucestershire winning the Benson & Hedges Cup in 1977. I was almost 2 at the time. It was the team they had which featured Zaheer Abbas.
I was at that game!
Amazing. It was one the first trophies that they had won.
Yes, that’s right. They won their first trophy, the Gillette Cup in 1973, so that win in 1977 was pretty momentous.
My birthday is in October, I wouldn’t have been 2 yet, still a toddler. I think there was an open top bus tour, or something like that, which my folks took me along to. So, I have clippings from that in my scrapbook.
So although I don’t actually remember it, I remember that I was there when it happened.
Then when we still lived in Gloucestershire, my dad played cricket for Mincinhampton. I don’t really remember watching him but often as kids, we would go along and would probably been amusing ourselves on the edge of the boundary when my dad was playing. Then, maybe sitting outside the pub at the game.
My dad was a decent player. He played in school in Scotland, then for Minchinhampton when we moved to Stroud. I think he won player of the year, at least once, maybe a couple of times. When we moved back up to Scotland in the eighties, he kind of stopped playing then, got more into running. He never really played again but still followed the game.
Minchinhampton would have been a decent standard. Was he a batter or a bowler?
He was an allrounder, I think he was decent at both.
Did you ever play when you were a youngster?
Didn’t play properly as a really young kid. As kids though, my brother and I would play in the garden with my dad and I enjoyed that. When we moved back up to Scotland, when I was around 7 or 8 it was harder to find other people to play. We were living in West Scotland, so football was very much the thing.
As a teenager, I was still into cricket and started playing for a local team called Irvine Cricket Club as part of the West Scotland League. Played a couple of seasons with them, I was never great. Played mostly for the Third XI, maybe for the Seconds a couple of times. I enjoyed it but I was never great at either batting or bowling.
Tell me about it, I loved cricket but as I have mentioned to other guests before, I was a specialist number 9 batter, 5th change bowler and Third Man fielder!
I was about the same! When it came to batting, if I managed to block a couple of balls with a straight bat, I felt like I had had quite a decent innings! The same if I bowled an over that didn’t include three no-balls.
Did your time at Irvine Cricket Club involve much travelling?
Mainly in and around Glasgow, then some of the towns and villages down the West Coast. It was interesting because I suppose the perception of the game up here, at that time, was that it was a posh person’s game, or mostly English folk that would be into it. Actually it was an interesting mixture of people that were involved. There were people from a variety of backgrounds who were interested in playing. We had a Pro at the club, who played for the first XI, he was a Pakistani guy who was a properly good player, he also coached the younger players which worked well.
I was at the age when I’d played for a couple of seasons, if I’d been good, I probably would have stuck at it. Other things in my life just started to take over, so I stopped playing.
When you were young were there any particular players that you admired, or looked up to?
Yes, to back track a bit. Although it was the success of the Gloucestershire team that got me into the game, I was too young to remember any of them. It was the 1985 Ashes series that got me interested in watching the game. I was vaguely conscious of the ’81 Ashes but not old enough to appreciate it. I’m more aware of that one in retrospect, rather than real memories from the time.
I think I fell in love with the game watching that ’85 Ashes Series. I bat left-handed, so I loved David Gower. I also really liked Graham Gooch as well, in retrospect I would have been harder on him, for going to play in South Africa during the apartheid era. As a kid, I was obviously less aware of that. I think that him Gatting and Embury had all served a three year Test ban for going on that tour. I think this was their return to the England side. Obviously Botham was an influence as well, being from the West Country my folks loved Botham. I loved the West Indies team as well.
It’s funny, I was born in England but as a football fan, I’ve always identified as Scottish. But with cricket, I’m English enough to enjoy it when they do well, but Scottish enough to also like it when they take a hiding off other people!
So, the 80’s West Indies team with Gordon Greenidge, Viv Richards and whatever the quartet of fast bowlers they had at the time, it could be Holding, Marshall, Joel Garner, Patrick Patterson, Courtney Walsh or anyone from that incredible conveyor belt of talent. They were amazing, took the game somewhere else, turned it into a different thing.
Have you seen the film Fire in Babylon about the West Indies cricket team?
No, I’ve been meaning to watch it but haven’t done so yet.
It’s brilliant.
Just going back to David Gower, did you ever try to emulate him by having a curly perm?
(laughing) No, I always had really fine straight hair, so it wasn’t an option for me.
Looking back at your youth in Scotland, I guess you didn’t play cricket in School at all.
No, we didn’t. Actually there was very little extracurricular stuff in school. I think a lot of my school years, coincided with a time of industrial action among the teachers, so there was less organised sport. I don’t know if it would have happened prior to that. We certainly didn’t really do any team sport at school. The only team sport that I did as a kid, was playing football for the Cub Scouts, I was crap at that as well!
Where any of your mates in Scotland into cricket when you were young?
Yeah, I think because Test cricket was on terrestrial TV at the time, it and the players had enough of a profile to attract attention. There are kids who are into all sports, would watch football in the winter, then cricket and athletics in the summer. There might have the odd time that a pal would join us in the garden at home, for a short sided game as kids.
Especially in that 80’s era, when it was on the telly, and as a kid you didn’t have anything to do, so you’d watch it. People knew who Botham and Gower were.
You mentioned your brother earlier. Did he play at all?
Not really, only in the garden. He didn’t play for a team at all.
The relatives that I’ve got that were more into it, weren’t folks that I saw particularly often. My mum’s sister had moved down to South Wales with her family. Her husband, my Uncle Vic and my cousin Joe, they played village cricket in South Wales and were quite involved with their local team. Occasionally as a kid, Uncle Vic with stay with us if he was working in Scotland, then I’d be chatting to him about cricket.
Would you have spent a lot of time, sitting, and watching the Test games on TV. Or, would you listen on the radio?
A mixture of both. My folks have always been into gardening, and we always lived in a house with quite a big garden. I have a lot of memories of being outside and being roped into helping my folks, with the Test match being on the radio, as we did various things.
I fondly remember the periods when there was no play, they would just have to “fill” for hours, which somehow, they did.
Yes, it is quite an amazing skill that they had, to be able to do that for hours.
Did your mum like cricket as well as your dad?
I think my mum does enjoy it. They have the Sports channels on TV at home and watch quite a bit. They enjoy the Twenty Twenty and I think my mum quite enjoys the fact that the women’s game is getting more prominence these days as well. Now it’s getting much more coverage. My folks both enjoy watching the game. They live quite near Colchester now, so when Essex are playing there, they will get along sometimes to watch.
Did you ever go, or do you get the chance to go now?
Well the time that I went a little bit, it was watching Essex as well. I lived down there for a year, but would continue going down there occasionally when I lived in Glasgow.
After that ’85 Ashes series, I used to get the Playfair annual. You know, if you couldn’t afford to get Wisden with your pocket money, you bought the Playfair Annual instead. They had a competition, where you had to pick a team, then come up with some sort of slogan.
I was actually one of the winners of that competition!
That was when we were living in Scotland. We had to get the train down from Scotland to London, the prize was a lunch on the top floor of the Nat West Tower (they sponsored the Playfair Annual at the time), I met Bill Frindall the BBC scorer and stats guy, as he was at the lunch. I was also given a Duncan Fearnley bat. They asked what county I followed, and I said Essex because Graham Gooch was my favourite player then, so I got a junior membership for Essex, even though we still lived in Scotland, which I think was part of the prize.
I kept that membership up. Then purely by coincidence we moved to Essex and I still had it. So I would go along for the odd championship or one day game.
What an amazing prize to win!
Yes! The other funny thing, which my dad always likes saying when the story comes up is related to the journey. The day of the prize giving in London, there was a really bad snowstorm, all over the country. So even though we were coming all the way from Scotland, we were the only people that actually made it. The sleeper train was running, but trains in the rest of the network were cancelled, so we were the only people there, even though we’d come all the way from Scotland.
The Geddes family with Bill Frindall (left) and Fred Titmus (right)
How amazing!
I see you won £450 as well. That was a lot a lot of money in 1986, especially for a schoolboy!
It was. I spent a lot of it on sweets and Lego. The rest I just squandered!
Fantastic!
Oh, I would have love to have met Bill Frindall. As a child I loved the way he knew all the stats and had come up with his own way of scoring. I wrote to him, and he sent me some blank copies of his score sheets, which I then copied and used myself for a while.
Have you still got the bat?
I’ll have to check; it might still be in my parents garage. It wasn’t full size, maybe a size 5 or 6. I was never the tallest, so I still used it when I was playing for Irvine in my teens. I never actually bought a proper full-sized bat, so it did me ok.
From the sound of it, it probably wasn’t ever properly knocked in!
Yes, (laughing) I only ever hit the ball about twice in an innings!
Chris trying the new bat, with some very close catcher’s. I questioned the gap between his bat and pad. “You don’t know how big my pads were!” Was his reply.
When you’ve been away on tour with the band, have you ever had a chance to watch a game? I guess, I’m thinking of Australia in the main.
No. I haven’t. If I’m out and about and I come across a game, I’ll always stop and watch a few balls but I’ve never been to a proper game in Australia or South Africa when we’ve been there.
In Glasgow I used to live near Pollok Park where there are a few pitches. If I was out for a run or a walk around the park, I’d stop and watch for a while if a game was going on for a few minutes.
Something I like, is that nowadays you will see Pakistani or Indian guys playing pick-up games in the parks in Glasgow. Again, I’ll stop and watch that, but I haven’t been to any sort of proper organised game for a long time.
What would be your favourite form of Cricket?
Oh, yes, Test Cricket, all the way for me. Part of it is harking back to that time when you didn’t really have anything else to do. Just plonk yourself down in front of the telly.
We’ve never had Sky, so when it went off terrestrial telly, test cricket was lost to me.
Yes, it is a pity definitely. I see it when I’m at my mum and dad’s, I have to say the Sky coverage is really, really good. It’s very well done. But it is a shame that it’s not regularly on terrestrial TV anymore. I’ve kind of fallen out of following the game in the modern era, as the only time I see a bit of 20/20 or The 100 is if I’m at my parents and they have it on. I can see the appeal of being able to sit down and watch a game of cricket to a conclusion, in the same way that you would with a game of football.
Also, although it’s kind of exciting to watch a game, where the batter is trying to hit every ball out of the ground. But I feel that if that had been the original form of the game, there wouldn’t be the amount of literature that cricket has produced. All the whole “cricket as a metaphor for life” thing, is much more applicable to Test matches.
Does anyone else in the band like cricket, or are you a lone rider on this?
Be careful with that stump Chris!
It’s funny, it’s not something that we’ve really spoken about much between ourselves. I would think that Stuart (Murdoch) would be a bit of a fan, as he’s got that general sports mentality. He follows Football, grew up enjoying Track & Field and Tennis, Golf, all that stuff. I would think he probably has a passing interest in it.
Are you familiar with The Duckworth Lewis Method, the cricket themed band put together by Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy and Thomas Walsh of Pugwash?
Yes, I haven’t heard the whole albums, but I’ve heard some songs off them and thought they were good. Stuart is quite good pals with Neil, so it’s possible that they talk cricket.
You touched on cricket writing just know. Do you have any favourite writers about the game?
As a teenager, I used to have a whole shelf of cricket books. Both on the numbers side and the general stuff around the game. There was one that I read more recently, was the Harold Larwood biography by Duncan Hamilton. It was really good on the social history of the game, especially the class aspects of it. Larwood was a working class guy from the pits in Nottinghamshire, a “professional” player. Obviously Jardine, the captain on the bodyline tour was a “Gentleman”, of course he was Scottish, though English for the purposes of cricket. That book was a really good read, both as a biography of a sportsman and a more general snapshot of the era.
With the advent of the internet and real-time comment and opinion, the nature of cricket writing is changing rapidly. This now goes hand in hand with the seemingly never-ending array of new formats and competitions. Trying to “keep up” can be a little overwhelming.
It is interesting with the different formats. It means that there are more “top players” now, because you have different ones in differing formats. The best T20 players are not the best Test Match players. It’s interesting to see the way the game has changed, certainly from the period that we were talking about earlier, the majority of the Test players were playing regularly in County Championship games as well as international cricket. Now the elite level has separated from that.
Yes, they may play two or three games at the start of the season, then they aren’t seen again at Championship level in the main.
Just going back to Cricket in Scotland. We haven’t mentioned the cliché about the weather. I expect that there are quite a few three sweater games.
Yes, not many sports have their own type of sweater!
I think I might have seen you in some band photo’s wearing one?
It might have been Bob (Kildea), he was looking for a nice cricket sweater for a while. Not that he has any interest in playing, he likes the look though.
Is there anything that you would change about cricket?
I think having Test Cricket on terrestrial TV would be the big thing. It would make it much more accessible for people. I suppose the new formats have been introduced with greater accessibility in mind. It’s certainly a positive thing that the Women’s game is getting a lot more coverage.
In some sense, there is a shifting of the centre of gravity, of the game towards the Indian subcontinent. That’s kind of a good thing. India is a massive place and it’s good that it asserts itself in that way.
Thank you for your time Chris, I hope you and the band have a great time touring later in the year.
Sabet Choudhury (known as Seb) is a familiar to face to many in the West Country, thanks to his work as a TV reporter and news presenter. He spent 17 years with the BBC working on Points West, the evening news show, plus Inside Out West and contributing to the Springwatch series. He recently decided to switch sides and now co-presents the ITV West Country news show, so his patch now runs from Gloucestershire to Cornwall.
A keen club cricketer over many years, I’m sure his cool TV demeanour, remains in place when facing a quickie on a dodgy wicket somewhere in the Stroud Valley.
Hi Seb, thank you for finding the time to chat with me today. I understand that you started playing at your local club at a pretty young age.
Yes, my friend Andrew and I were about 8 years old, he was my best friend then, and still is. We rode our bikes all the way from King’s Stanley to Frocester Cricket Club. My parents just wanted me to have a hobby, we were fresh to the area, which was very strange to us. We were the only Asian family, I was trying to find my feet in this place. My parents thought cricket would be a good thing, as it would get me to meet people. Mum was an enormous cricket fan. Cricket didn’t have the huge competitiveness of football or rugby. I don’t have kids but if I did, I would push them towards cricket. It’s a game that teaches you how to communicate with people.
Playing cricket is a great way to make new friends, it can be quite easy to make three, four , five friends as you all have something in common. Was that the case for you?
Yes. That group of people that I met back then, I’m still friends with four or five of them now. We will still meet up, amazingly we still meet up at Frocester. Two of them, I still play cricket with. Cricket can provide a great bonding experience. It can be competitive, and certainly when we were younger, we were more competitive. Off the field there is an element of enjoyment and fun that, I didn’t experience when playing rugby. It was a much more laddish experience, if I can use that phrase. I didn’t play football, so I don’t know about that environment. On the cricket field, you have time to get to know people. You get to know their quirks, everything about them really.
Certainly, here in Frocester, I realised what a wonderful place the countryside was. I’ve been a massive campaigner for loving the countryside. There are a lot of negative comments that are said, about it not being welcoming, especially for people that look like me. I’ve disagreed with that.
Frocester is a village cricket team, very much a family atmosphere. I remember all the parents would hang out there. All the first teamers would do so as well. On a Saturday I would go and watch the first team play and the players would come and chat with you. When you’re an eight year old, they were like Gods. If I can say it, slightly unfit, overweight Gods! But they were great. And I always wanted to stay in that club, and bar a couple of seasons, I have been here.
Did you play in school as well?
I went to Maidenhill School, the comprehensive in Stonehouse. It didn’t have a cricket team, that’s part of the problem that still exists, cricket isn’t really played in those places, so we miss out of finding amazing players. All of my friends that I play with here, are incredible cricketers, but no, sadly we didn’t get the chance to play in school. It wasn’t until I went to Wycliffe College, a public school for a couple of years, that I suddenly started playing cricket in school. You forget how amazing it is for children to play cricket in school, again it’s the time element, the length of time it takes to play the game leads to something amazing.
I guess it comes down to economic resources, financial pressures on state schools, whereas public schools may have more at their disposal. It’s such a shame that so many kids are lost to the game, simply because they aren’t exposed to it.
That’s where the ECB should come in! The money that comes to the game, should go into the schools. That’s where you will find the next generation of players.
You touched on your mum’s love of the game earlier. Can you tell me a bit more about her.
She was around in the Indian post partition period, so was based in East Pakistan. She grew up in a family that loved cricket, her brothers were cricket fanatics. She told me the story, that her brother would make her sit and score a game, from the radio! Something that she never lost, even until her last summer. She loved scoring off the radio. It’s an amazing thing, just on scraps of paper, which I hope I’ve kept around the house somewhere.
I’ve never heard of someone doing it off the radio.
I don’t know if it’s an Indian subcontinent quirk. But certainly for her, if her brother would go off somewhere, she’d keep a record for him. Cricket is amazing, you can see an entire days play from looking at a sheet of paper. It’s another thing that I love the game for. I have a book by E.W. Swanton, which has scorecards dating back to something like the 1920’s. Every single game, you can replay it, just by following through the scorecard. I think my mother always loved that. I wish I’d talked to her more about it. It was such an oddity, that I never questioned it.
There’s a lot of talk about mindfulness these days. What a brilliant way to put yourself in a moment. If you are scoring, you have to concentrate on each specific moment.
You’re right. Scorers are a breed unto themselves.
I take it that she would come along and watch you at Frocester?
She did, she was very proud of me as a “fast bowler”. I was quick enough to get in front of Andy Stovold (former Gloucestershire player, who was then involved with coaching young talent for the county), back not quick enough to stay in front of him, if I could put it that way.
She used to love watching me play. During Tea she would say, “you need to bowl a bit faster” or “you need to bend your back a bit”. I just thought, wow that’s incredible. She loved it.
She was one of those people who, I think really understood the game. Actually did so, way more that I gave her credit for. In a funny way, I genuinely wish I’d listened to her a little bit more. I might have made it, we’ll never know! But when it’s your mother, it’s “oh, what do they know”.
Where there any fast bowlers that you modelled yourself on?
Waqar Younis. When I saw him, I was just awe inspired. There’s something that’s more prevalent now, the idea of emulating people who look like you. I saw Waqar Younis bowl at the County Ground when he was playing for Surrey. I’d never seen anything like it, that run-up, that pace, that inswinging yorker. He was a reasonable size but not that big, I’m quite short and thought, well if he can do it…
Suddenly, overnight after watching him, I added about ten yards to my run-up, in the hope that I could reach that sort of pace. You may remember, he had that amazingly long run-up. Wasim Akram, seemed quite languid, taking a few steps. Whereas Waqar was all effort, and I loved that. He was the one for me.
On that topic then. You were obviously playing quite a bit. Did you get the chance to watch much cricket?
I did, though I never really sat down and watched cricket. I think that was also part of my problem with playing it. I just wanted to do stuff, playing in the nets, going out with my friends. Even if I went to a game at Frocester, I’d go to the nets and have a bowl. I think that’s part of the reason why certain people make it, and others don’t. You have to watch the game, have to observe what others are doing. You hear great players talk about how they developed, they often talk about how they analysed other people’s game.
Was there anyone at Frocester that try to develop your talents?
Yes, Frocester had some amazing players. One of them is John Evans, who was my captain for a long, long time. He’s 70 or so, and he’s still playing. He’s playing for England over 70’s, he just a machine! He’s still scoring runs, he’s amazing. There’s another guy called Dave Whincup, who I’m friends with. He’s just one of the best batters I’ve ever seen.
I think what’s changed in village cricket recently is this. It used to throw up these people who had jobs, who were just your friends in the village. Then at the weekend that skill and natural ability came out. Now when you go to those teams, they will have professionals there, players I hugely admire, but they are paid to do what they do.
I think that’s caused a change, leading to something that I miss a lot. You would go along to a village game and see someone like Dave Whincup, and just think how is this guy that good, and not playing somewhere else? I guess it’s questionable to me, when someone is a professional at that level.
It’s some ways it’s great. You get to watch these amazing players, that you wouldn’t have the chance to normally. But is it really helping the grass roots level? I see a lot of young people going to these teams, going along to training in the evening. How many of them are going to make it to first XI, if they want to do that? But how many will be able to do that, if the first XI is full of people that aren’t from there?
I knew that when I was practising at the age of 11 or 12, that I genuinely stood a chance of playing for the first team one day. I was 100% confident that I could do that, if I played hard and well. If I took some wickets for the thirds or the seconds, I could get in. That’s not the case anymore.
Thinking of playing for Frocester, which is in a lovely part of the world. Do you have any favourite grounds in the area?
We used to go to a place called Dumbleton, that is a beautiful place. There are some amazing, little quirky grounds. There one called Rockhampton, which is quite near me, they have a new ground where Gloucester 2nds sometimes play, but their original pitch, it’s about the size of my garden. I remember turning up there, and thinking, is this a real cricket ground? It was so small. Then you discover there are other places like that, Frampton has a cricket ground on the village green. Those quirky places, I absolutely love.
I’ve had a couple of occasions when I’ve gone to the wrong ground. Once I was so late that I just ran into the dressing room, got changed and joined the team on the field. Only to realise, that it wasn’t my side!
On another occasion, I drove three of my teammates to the wrong ground. Making us massively late for our match. Lets just say that cricket brings out the worst time keeper in me.
Any particular good ones for that all important tea? Any good sandwiches out there?
Oh yes, Clevedon. I remember that tea. I played there recently for a BBC team, not that I actually work for the BBC anymore. In fact, I think there is probably only one person in the team that does. Anyway, we travel around playing games. We went there not long ago, that was a place with a great tea and I’m pleased to say that has been retained.
Although in a lot of places, teas are not around anymore.
What! How can that be?
This is a post-covid thing. I played last season and I was horrified to learn, no teas. You have to bring your own sandwiches!
That’s another thing that the ECB needs to get involved with. Get that sorted out.
Exactly! Some teams do it, but the majority don’t.
You played at university, tell me about those days. I Understand it wasn’t always a happy experience.
I played at University in London. There was a university team that I really wanted to play for, and I got into the team. I was at the student union bar, and I was approached by an Asian guy who told me that they had an Asian cricket team, this is in 1993 or 94, and that I should be playing in that team. I just thought, well no. I was very naïve because I came from this area of Gloucestershire, where I was very integrated. I didn’t really see colour in anything, I guess. I was suddenly really struck by them saying: you should be playing with us, because you are one of us. I just thought, no. This is odd, I play for the university team.
I remember his slight concern, slight worry and slight anger. I just thought to myself, is this what it should be. It was the first time that I had felt pressure to be in a separate team because of the way I looked. That stayed with me. That was not such a great experience.
I was reading last season about league cricket in Bradford being pretty much segregated, which just feels wrong on every level. In Bristol we’ve had Bristol West Indians, Bristol Pakistani and now a Bristol Afghan team, there have always been those teams, which in large cities I can see some sense in that.
Yes.
It feels very self-limiting to me though.
It can be, looking at the history of someone like the Bristol West Indians, they were pioneers. Someone like Guy Reid-Bailey, an amazing man, at a time when you couldn’t integrate to play. You needed something like that. Guy did something so special, because he did it, not only for the West Indians. He allowed Asians to start teams, he’s a great man. I think nowadays, in many ways I can see it as a community thing. But I don’t think that should be the norm. I think that you should see teams playing together and areas playing together. Cricket is meant to be uniting.
Have you ever watched cricket overseas?
I watched some when I was in India. But as I mentioned earlier, I’ve never been one for saying let’s go and sit down and watch cricket. When I was in India, I did play cricket on the streets though. I was travelling around and played there, it was so much fun. That’s probably more competitive than the game that’s being played in the stadium!
My absolute ambition is to go and watch cricket in the West Indies. I think that’s something I’ll do with my father, who literally pretends to understand cricket.
I heard you talking about him before, saying that he used to bluff his way through games, in an effort to impress your mum.
Oh my god, you’d think by now he would have learned about the game. Here’s the level of fraud that he went to.
Fraud is a strong word!
This applies to him! I’ve seen him sit through entire test matches with my mother, now that’s commitment to your level of deception. You’re are watching 7 hours of play a day, for 5 days and not understanding what is going on. Not a clue! I admire that. It admirable or absolute stupidity.
So, the wish to go to the West Indies, is that down to any particular West Indian players? Or the way they play the game?
It’s Viv Richards. I know everyone says, Viv Richards.
Slightly digressing, the job that I do is roughly 90% showing that you are confident and 10% ability. So on a day that you are slightly unsure about what you are doing, which is most days, confidence is important. Now, that could be standing in front of the camera, or interviewing somebody, or reading the news. Just showing somebody else that you are there, that you are confident enough to do it. If you can prove that you are slightly confident, people react to you differently.
They then trust you to either tell the story or get the story. They buy into your experience.
Yes, and also for them to tell you, their story. You are not going to tell your story to someone who is not sure of themselves. When I was just about to leave the BBC, I had a bit of a “what am I doing?” time. My friend Andrew sent me one of those GIFs of Viv Richards walking out to bat. Swinging his bat, and that sort of swagger that he had. He got out 2nd ball and the GIF of him walking back is exactly the same! It’s that element of – It doesn’t matter. You still have your swagger, you still have your confidence.
So yes, Viv Richards for that. Also, I always wanted to see Malcolm Marshall bowl. There were two things with him. How did a man run in with such a curve. And deliver that ball so beautifully straight? The other thing with him and Curtly Ambrose actually. How was it, that those little chains that they wore around their neck, did not hit them in the face?
Those were my two big questions when I was growing up.
Watching Malcolm Marshall hit Mike Gatting on the nose. That was brutal, those were brutal cricket games.
Your pace may have been a couple of miles an hour less that Marshall, did you ever hit anyone when you were bowling?
A couple of miles! You’re looking at about 40 – 45 miles an hour less!
I did hit a few people. This is going to sound bad, but as a fast bowler, you just think, wow! I did that! That’s the amazing nature of cricket, some of the best fast bowlers that I’ve met are just the nicest, quietest people.
In school I used to play with this guy called Simon Thomas, he was the nastiest piece of work that I have ever seen, as a fast bowler. He used to open one end, I’d open at the other. He used to come in all the way from Third Man just to say “knock his head off!” we were 16, I’d be telling him to calm down. But he taught me about controlled aggression, he was a very wise head even at that age. He knew just when to slip in a bouncer. The way I used to bowl, I didn’t have a slower ball, just used to try bowling faster, and faster, and faster. My slower balls probably started from my second over. Just because I was absolutely knackered after my first over.
There would be thirty slower balls after that, as I got more tired.
The last time I hit someone was on a very ropey pitch, whilst playing for Frocester thirds or fourths. The ball just reared up and hit someone in the ear, cut it, so he was bleeding. I did the decent thing after the game, had a selfie with him! Which I keep to this day. Sent it straight to my wife, “look what I did”
I got hit at a BBC game quite recently, just before the pandemic. This is the stupid thing about cricketers, after playing for a lot of years, you just don’t listen to anyone. I was going out to bat, it was a friendly game, I said to my friends, “should I wear a helmet? One of them said, “wear a helmet, your old, you can’t see. Just wear a helmet”. This other guy who was saying you don’t need one said, “look the only way you are going to get hit, is if you smack it into your own face.” I’m not going to do that, I’m not an idiot.
First ball, I chipped it off the bat, straight into my face! Blood everywhere. I learnt a valuable lesson. You are never as good as you think you are.
I spoke to Jon Hotten for one of these interviews, he spoke about this sort of thing. The daft way you got out, the bad ball that bowl at a crucial time, they never leave you. You will wake up at three in the morning it two years time, thinking, why did I do that…Do you get that sort of situation, or can you park it?
I don’t park it at all. I hold grudges with myself every day. It’s so silly.
I try to tell myself, don’t try to hit the ball out of the ground.
Just be steady.
My mantra is – Just stay in here, stay in. You’re paying £7.50 to play this game. Stay in here.
And what happens?
It never works when your out there. First ball, you think, that’s going to the church! It never works. Nowadays, in my advanced years, I put a monetary value on my time. If I’m paying, I’m going to have fun.
We spoke about your bowling. Where would your natural position be in the batting order?
I’d like to think about 4 or 5 but ability wise, it should be 8 or 9. I’m sort of the floater batter, I guess. If they needed a quick 20 or 30 they would send me in. There was a period when I did open the batting. Cricket goes in waves doesn’t it and in the late 90’s England and all the other teams, tried to get off to a flyer, so club teams tried to emulate that. They sent in the cannon fodder like me, to get some quick runs. That went ok for a bit. I was quite a wristy player, in that Asian Subcontinent way. I was lucky with that, I could just turn something of middle stump, and it would go. I guess that was from watching the Pakistanis and the Indians.
My mum used to love watching Kapil Dev. Loved the way he batted. Some people have the talent to make the game look easy. Then there are disruptors like me, who make it look like the hardest game in the world. I make it look very hard, something I still do to this day.
Maybe it’s your contribution to the community. “Look, if I can do it, and I’m really not any good. Maybe you can have a go as well.”
Yes, that’s it!
Have you ever scored a ton?
Yes, I have. I’ve got a couple to my name. Scored quite a few fifties as well. Cricket is one of those games that has a devil on your shoulder, through the whole day. I’ve never mastered that. It has a least taught me that there is this devil on your shoulder, trying to get you to do bad things. You know that off spinner is going to knock your middle stump out, yet the devil say’s “I’ve got this”. I said to someone, “I’m going to dance down the wicket like Fred Astaire, he said to me. You are less Fred Astaire, and more Fred falls down the stairs! My footwork is just run down the pitch and hope for the best.
It’s a devil of a game. It can convince you one week, that what you are doing is absolutely right. Then the next week, the same technique goes to absolute crap. It builds you up, just so it can knock you down again.
I’m in awe of some of those people at Frocester, that I grew up watching. That ability to switch it on, every Saturday. It’s quite something.
Talking of great batters like yourself, it’s reminded me of my strangest cricketing memory. A few years ago, I met the great Sunil Gavaskar, in Glasgow airport of all places. No idea what he was doing there but I had a brief chat and shook his hand.
Wow, is he as small as he looks on TV?
Yes, nothing to him. And you think of him taking on those incredible West Indian, Australian and Pakistan attacks with incredible hand eye coordination, skill and bravery.
Yes, not a helmet in sight. You just reminded me, when I got married in 2011, we had a week before we went on our honeymoon. The day before we left BBC Points West sent me to Maidenhead where Viv Richards was playing golf! So, I got to interview him, I’d completely forgotten about that until just now.
Viv had enjoyed a rough night the previous evening. I just remember thinking, how are you going to hit a ball? He was just swaying around. I had a chat with him, had a photo taken. Then he went out to the golf course – perfect swing.
These sorts of people are just magical. These legends that walk amongst us. I think it comes back to that mastery, that inner voice which they can just control.
I got to meet Courtney Walsh once as well. There was a testimonial game at Frocester and he came along and played. One of our Batters asked him to “slip him a fast one.”
Courtney did!
I have not seen anything as quick as that.
It was also my first experience of meeting Jack Russell, who has become a wonderful friend now. Jack was keeping wicket. He was so far back. When I was bowling as a kid, I thought I must be quick because the keeper is standing a bit further back. Then you see how far Jack is standing back to Courtney, wow! And it’s still going up when it reaches him!
Meeting those sort players, is just fantastic. Cricket is a funny sport, you have these amazing experiences, then you forget them until something triggers the memory.
I haven’t got many memories involving playing. I realised quickly that batting at 9, being 5th change bowler and a specialist Third Man wasn’t leading to a great career.
Ha, ha, that’s what I do now. That’s the problem about going back. You become, what you used to laugh at.
But maybe you are the wise head in the dressing room, encouraging the younger players. So that they can ignore you, in the same way that you did in the past.
I luckily have learnt that the way to avoid being ignored, is not to give any advice at all! I just keep my mouth shut these days.
I almost didn’t want to go back to playing actually. This is the cruel thing about cricket, you suddenly start losing your mates, they stop playing. That’s when you start thinking, what am I doing here, I don’t know any of these guys.
I think that the longer you play, and you should play for as long as you can. But after a while, you start to erode those memories of when you were any good. They are replaced by, that time I bowled and my shoulder completely went. Or the time when I bowled a long stint, then couldn’t move for three weeks. That’s what happens and I have to be very wary of that balance between the good memories, and the not so good.
I played much more football, than I ever did cricket. I realised that when I was turning up, hoping to be a sub instead of starting, then it was probably time to stop.
That’s the beauty of football, you can be sub. In cricket you have to last out the whole humiliating process.
At the very end of my football days, in the Bristol Casual league for players over 35, they had “rolling subs”. So you could burst up the wing, collapse. Go off for ten minutes. Then come back on when you mate has done the same thing.
Oh that’s great, league cricket could learn a lot from that.
Yes, you could bowl your one over, at full tilt. Go off, have a lie down, maybe a massage. Then bowl another one and repeat the process.
Yes, I think the world would be a happier place. I’ll happily pay my subs for that!
Earlier on you touched upon that E.W. Swanton book. Were you much of a reader about the game. Any favourites?
Yes, I’m sure this is a book but I have the audible version, it’s Jonathan Agnew – Cricket: A Modern Anthology. Anyone who loves the game, should read, or listen to that. It’s a book that I keep on going back to as it talks about the changes that the game has gone through. Just to listen to the stuff about the Bodyline tour, he really gets into the story of that. Its great on the 2005 Ashes series.
My wife is not really into cricket but we’ve started watching cricket documentaries together. There is one called The Edge, which looks at England rise to number 1 during the Strauss period under Andy Flower. Then the one about Ben Stokes, also The Test on the Australian team. All of them, looking at the mental side of cricket, the pressures that there are. My wife is now suddenly understanding cricket and the mental resilience that you need to succeed.
If you look at cricket as a sport from a distance, it can seem confusing at best, pointless at worst. When you deep dive into it, you realise what an amazing game it is. The documentaries are now bringing that out. Books like Agnews are a bible of cricket.
I encourage every cricketer, no matter what level, to look at scorecards. Whenever I’m coaching young journalists, I always encourage them to visualise things, encourage their creativity. Creativity is a muscle. Cricket scorecards encourage that.
There was also the documentary on the classic West Indies team.
Yes, Fire in Babylon. That was extraordinary, that was the first cricket documentary that I saw. Would you say that it’s only fairly recently that cricket has become a film makers dream?
I think so. I think the length of time it takes to play cricket actually helps in that medium. It’s odd that people didn’t see the possibilities before.
Cricket at its best can be one of the most relaxing things that you can do. Even a few years ago, I was turning up at games hoping to do really well, played the game hard. Now I think I go there as a genuine, empty the brain of your stresses and woes type afternoon. Cricket during the period when my mother was ill, which was a long time, was really important for me. That combined with the stress of working and looking after her, and of general life. I was so grateful to cricket. That chance to just turn up and just breathe out.
This current crop of film makers, they are realising the therapeutic effect of it. I learnt a lot from the Ben Stokes documentary and The Edge documentary, they made me learn a lot about myself.
That Ben Stokes show really showed the range of things that he had to deal with. Just to play a game of cricket. The fact that Sam Mendes, someone at the very top end of film and theatre direction wanted to make a film such as that, really showed the power of the game. As well as Ben Stokes as a complex, engaging individual. What a character to focus a narrative on, Mendes did it brilliantly.
I’ve got some friends who are great actors, they go off and play the game. One of them said that for them, it’s just a chance to spend time in my character, by myself and I can see why that is appealing. You can stand in a field for a few hours and just be yourself.
Yes, those films really open it up to the public. Would you say that cricket has shaken off it’s elitist status yet, is it a game for all?
I don’t think it has. Some of that is economics and schooling. Many children don’t have the opportunity to experience the game. So the game can be weighted towards a certain type of person, from a certain type of background. There is a lot of work to be done there.
I’m delighted to see how hard Gloucestershire are working to get different communities involved. To make it a welcoming hospitable place. I was at a game last season where the club had invited a substantial number of refuges along to the game. Many of them were completely baffled by what was going on! But some of them clearly loved it. I heard one of them saying, “I never thought that I would be able to go to a cricket game, never thought I would have that chance”.
Also other groups and school kids have been invited, All good initiatives.
It’s clear that for County cricket to teams to survive, they need to be part of the community. Gloucestershire and many other Counties are working hard at that. I think that the penny has dropped.
Well that’s good to hear.
Finally, is there anything that you would change about the game?
I like the level of professionalism that has come into the game at Club level. But, I think there needs to be something, to encourage the younger players to have the aspiration to be in the first team. There has to be a pathway, I don’t think it’s there at the moment. It’s not because of the clubs, it’s down to the concerns about being “good enough” in their league, drives them to bringing in ex pros, or current professionals. That cuts off the blood supply for the next generation.
We need to create a better pathway. And to encourage the young players, not to bolster the current side to the top of the league. You can be so obsessed with trying to climb the league, that you forget what your purpose is. That purpose is, to keep this game alive.
They have to be the custodians of the game, passing it on to the next generation.
And I don’t think we are doing a very good job of that, at all.
My next guest for a chat about cricket is the Broadcaster, author and journalist Robert Elms. Robert has been on my cultural radar since the early 1980’s thanks to his work for The Face magazine.
Since those days, he has written a novel as well books on Spain and also one on youth fashion. His book on his beloved London, called London Made Us, is a wonderful love letter to the city. It’s one of my favourite reads of the last few years, both a joyous celebration of its recent past and a cautionary guide as to dangers of London simply being seen as a cash cow, rather than a place where every culture and class can find a home.
His shows on Radio London are amongst the best on radio. They cover a huge array of topics, which have London at their heart but embrace the wider nation, and indeed world in their scope. Here you can find engaging conversations on architecture, literature, travel, poetry, food, art, cinema, theatre, music, the changing nature of the city and much more. We also get to share his delight and despair, as Queens Park Rangers take him on an emotional roller-coaster during the football season.
Thank you for finding the time to have a chat with me Robert. What are your first memories of cricket?
It’s very strange, this is a slightly odd story. My father died when I was 6, he died out of the blue at the age of 41, so I have very few memories of him. One of the memories that I have, and one of the few photographs I have, is of us playing cricket together in the park. It’s with my two elder brothers, my dad’s is batting and I’m fielding. A little, old black and white snap. Now I don’t remember that specific game, but I do remember playing cricket with my dad. So it’s actually one of the very few memories that I have of my dad. We definitely played cricket together, it wasn’t a match, it was just the family in the park with a bat and some stumps. That’s my earliest memory.
I sort of hope that he was a “competitive dad” type figure, you know 427 not out at the end of the day!
(laughing) To be honest I have no recollection. Cricket wasn’t his main sport, he was primarily a football fan. He bequeathed me Queens Park Rangers, the most consistent, and greatest sporting love of my life.
Did your brothers play?
Not really. Other than park cricket, or three stumps painted on a wall in the playground, which we played a lot. Also, we played some French Cricket. To be honest, I didn’t come from a cricket going family. It was very much a working-class family and very much a football family. I think they like cricket and they actively disliked Rugby. Football was the sport.
So my cricketing story, really began when I was 11. Having passed the 11 plus, I went to the Grammar School, and the school I went to, Orange Hill Grammar School for Boys, had a very strong cricketing tradition. So my proper introduction to cricket came after I turned 11.
That’s interesting. I’m a similar age and growing up in Bristol it was very hit and miss when it came to schools playing cricket. What was it like in London?
It was very much the same in London, But the grammar schools, tended to play more cricket. My school was primarily cricket and athletics. It had a football team of sorts; I don’t think it had a rugby team at all. Now, that may have just been down to the passion of one or two teachers. So I went to a cricketing school, I was never in the First XI though. I’m not really a great sportsman at anything to be honest.
Thinking of your playing days, what was your specialist skill?
Ideally, well in my mind at least, I’m quite a demon Leg Break bowler. I can just about do it now, but I’d probably put my shoulder out! I was one of those weird bowlers who would have one good delivery an over, then four or five completely wayward ones.
Well Leg Breaks are more difficult to control anyway, so maybe we can give you the benefit of the doubt.
Exactly! I don’t even know where the Leg Break thing came from. The ball just naturally came out of the back of my hand. But to be honest I never played at any real level. Playing cricket has never been something that I was good at. I don’t want this to sound like I could have been a contender. I wasn’t.
My Batting technique is pretty basic to be honest, and if it gets fast, I just get out of the way!
What was your first experience of going to watch cricket?
The first proper game that I went to was at Lords. My school was in North West London, so Lords was probably only twenty minutes away on the bus. I remember being taken along. I can’t remember who was playing. It wasn’t a Test Match, it may have been a County Championship game, actually I think may have been one of those, Oxford V. Cambridge or Eaton V. Harrow type games that you get at Lords. I remember that I went with the school, I don’t think everybody went, you had to put your name down to say that you were interested
I remember sitting around the boundary rope, aged about 12 I guess, we were wearing our school uniform. So that is my first memory of a cricket match, but I don’t actually know, what match it was.
I take it that you had been going to watch QPR at Loftus Road. Lords as a sporting arena must have been quite a different experience?
I’d been going to QPR since I was 6 with my dad, then as my nan’s house was directly over the road from the ground, so I carried on going after he died, I’ve basically been going there my whole life. Lords was a very different experience. After that first time I went quite a few times as a kid. Back in those days, you could just turn up on the day for Test Matches. I’m fairly certain that I didn’t always pay, there seemed to be some mechanism for getting in!
Like I mentioned earlier, we lived very close by, So, you’d go along on the half chance that you might be able to get in. I wouldn’t say that I went regularly, but I did go to Lords quite a lot. It was the only ground I went to at that stage, so I just thought that all cricket grounds were going to be like that!
It wasn’t quite the Lords that you have now. It still had the Tavern, in many ways I actually prefer it, as it was. It was majestic and was kind of glorious.
I remember my first trip there in 1978 and being gobsmacked at the contrast between Lords and the County Ground in Bristol. Then again, the lower levels under the old Father Time scoreboard, were pretty dark, it was almost like being in a dungeon.
Yes, I know what you mean. I tended back in those days to be in the Tavern, just standing. I became a Middlesex fan, not with the regularity that I would watch QPR though. I would go to the one-day games, wouldn’t often go to Championship games but every now and then I would. I have a couple of mates who were “cricket mates”, who I would go with. So, Middlesex have always been “my team”.
As a youngster where there any players that particularly caught your imagination?
Yes, although I’m as patriotic as the next man, it was those great West Indies teams. I was there for the Tony Greig “make ‘em grovel” Test at Lords. And was, not even secretly routing for the West Indies. I saw those great West Indies teams, they were wonderful. Also, growing up in North West London a fair percentage of my friends were of Caribbean origin, going to watch with them, back in the days when you could rattle your cans it was just incredibly exciting.
Later, I was lucky enough to watch England win at Sabina Park in 1990, saw Devon Malcolm bowl out Viv Richards!
Having said that, the cricketers that I most admired tended to be the West Indians, especially those fast bowlers. Later on, I always had a big soft spot for Phil Tufnell as a Middlesex player and given that I like a bit of spin bowling. Also, Angus Fraser of Middlesex, he went to my school, though he’s a bit younger than me. But as a local boy, who went to my school, that made him stand out.
Those West Indians seemed to be from a different planet. A previous interviewee said that they were just so different to the England team of the time, who seemed be old men in comparison. Their demeanour, their athleticism, it was just on a different level to England.
Exactly, they were beautiful. They were incredible. They played with both huge ferocity but also great glee. It was that combination of, you take the game really seriously but you smile as you do so. England players of that time were just very different, I think of players like Tavaré, standing there for hours at a time to score 5 runs.
Yes, England were stoic, the West Indies were spectacular.
Absolutely, it was very much that era of West Indies cricket that I still think of, as the greatest cricket that I’ve ever watched.
You mentioned about the atmosphere of the crowd and being able to turn up on the day along with a large element of West Indian support. Sadly, it’s seemingly lost that, with the booking months in advance.
It has lost that, and it’s so expensive. To be honest, I’ve pretty much stopped going to Test’s because I find it difficult to afford however much it is these days, for a days cricket.
There was a time when I went quite a lot, up until 5 or 6 years ago, I was still going quite a lot. I was at The Oval when they won The Ashes on the last day. It could be rekindled, the mate I used to go with has moved away, it’s so difficult to get tickets nowadays, you have to book so far in advance and they are so expensive.
Yes, I’ve been to one days play in a Test Match in the last thirty years. That was because a friend had a spare ticket and gave me a call. I’m too lazy, too disorganised to make a plan 6 months in advance.
I’m exactly the same. I started going to games again when 20/20 started, took my son, especially if was Middlesex v Surrey, the old enemy local derby sort of thing. It’s quite funny In football terms QPR are a West London team, there are quite a lot of people who go to QPR and Middlesex. Whereas Chelsea who are our enemies at football are Surrey supporters. Even though they are West London and on the North bank of the river, most of their support comes from Battersea and around there, so there is there is this non-violent rivalry. Middlesex are QPR and Brentford, Surrey are Chelsea and Crystal Palace.
I sort of thought that in my dotage I would turn to County Cricket. When 20/20 first started I went to a lot of those, and a couple of Middlesex away games. But that, sort of paled a bit to be honest. And when it comes to The Hundred, I’ve no idea.
Snap. The Hundred isn’t played in Bristol. The team we are nominally aligned with play in Cardiff and are called Welsh Fire, rather alienating most of the fans from Somerset and Gloucestershire.
I’m not surprised!
Finding myself with lots of time on my hands last summer, I found myself watching lots of cricket with people I’ve known since school days, which has been lovely.
Do you go and watch Gloucestershire?
Yes, it’s funny though that there is a football/cricket split here as well. Most Bristol City fans would follow Somerset
Oh right, really?
Yes, probably because Bristol City are based in the South of the city and Somerset would occasionally play in South Bristol, not that they do anymore. I live in the North of the city, very close to the Gloucestershire ground and the Bristol Rovers ground. Traditionally most people around here would be Gloucestershire and Rovers.
Gasheads!
Yep, you’ve got it. There is quite a bit of crossover. So, just going back to the attraction of watching Gloucestershire. A lot of it is the joy of sitting with my mates, talking nonsense for seven or eight hours, whilst the cricket unfolds in front of you.
To be honest, I’m kind of looking forward to doing that. When I get a bit more time, I’ve pencilled that in as my impending future.
You mentioned about the mate that you used to go with, who has moved away. Some people like to go for the quiet and the solitude. For others it’s a social occasion. What is your take on it?
It’s always been a social activity to me. I have been to cricket matches on my own, but I’d much rather go with a mate or two. I don’t want to go with a big boisterous group anymore, as I might have done as a teenager or in my early twenties. Going along with a mate or two, taking turns to go to the bar, you can talk politics, or whatever you fancy.
Yes, you have the time to have those languid conversations. There may be ten minutes or so, with nobody saying anything, and it’s fine.
Absolutely. I’d be very happy to sit there and read a copy of The Guardian but it’s nice to have someone to talk the game over with, as well. I do think that, for me at least, cricket is at best, a shared experience.
I fell away from cricket when the Sky deal came along, and it more or less disappeared from terrestrial TV. It was such a shame that after that amazing Ashes victory, which you saw being clinched, the sport disappeared from millions of homes. I felt completely disenfranchised from the game.
Yes, I can understand why. I agree with you. I think cricket keeps making bad decisions, throughout my lifetime, it’s made a series of wrong decisions. I guess if you turn up at Lords, on the first day of a Test and it’s sold out, you might not think that.
Anyway, changing tack, you spoke earlier about watching in in Jamaica. Tell me a bit more about that experience.
It was the first time that the West Indies had lost to England in Jamaica for decades, a preposterous amount of time. I went out with four or five cricketing mates from London, one or two went more for the Caribbean than the cricket. It was the cricket though, that prompted the trip. We went to every day of the Test, and amazingly England won. Having said that I loved those West Indian teams, I was there as an England fan. It was fantastic, if occasionally a bit hairy. Sabina Park is in quite a tough bit of Kingston, so you have to be aware of that.
We had a great time. I remember the celebrations on the night that we won the Test. We ended up in the same restaurant as the team, on this sort of pontoon. It was one of those nights , that if I could remember it, it would be fantastic! I do remember having my arm around some of the players and all of that sort of stuff. I’m not a member of the Barmy Army but that was a truly great experience.
I also watched England play in Mumbai. Yep, a couple of years ago. What I actually watched was Kholi scoring a double century, which in itself was quite something. I was only there for one day actually, it coincided with a trip that I was taking with my wife. I managed to convince her that she would quite enjoy a day at the cricket. I’m not sure that she did! It was an experience, I have to say. Watching India play fantastically in Mumbai was pretty exciting.
Was there much of a crowd?
It wasn’t bad that day actually, I remembering the crowd was absolutely roaring when Kholi was going well. It wasn’t sold out but it was a good crowd. To the degree that, because we got our tickets at the last minute through the hotel, we ended up sitting in the hot seats, directly in the sun. That was definitely a mistake!
The one test that I went to last summer was against India, at Edgbaston. I was sitting next to a wonderful chap, who was probably in his seventies. He and his wife had flown over from India specifically with the hope of seeing India win there for the first time. It wasn’t to be, as it turned out to be one of those remarkable English Tests from last summer. A big part the joy of that day though, was sitting next to him and chatting about his thoughts and experiences.
I think that’s one of the joys of cricket, as opposed to football. Football is truly tribal, if I’m watching Queens Park Rangers (and I usually am), then the opposition are the enemy. Whereas in cricket, it’s never been that, and I love that about cricket. I want football to be tribal, but I want cricket to be sociable.
The other thing is that I watch Gloucestershire, I want them to win but it doesn’t really matter in they don’t. Last season, I spent a lot of time watching them in Championship games, they got relegated, brilliant, of course they do. They didn’t win until the last two games of the season. I still really enjoyed it.
It’s the same for me with Middlesex. They have been down and back up, to be honest at the moment, I’m not even sure that I know where they are. I blame cricket for that to a degree, because of so many formats. There is always a game going on somewhere, and you don’t quite know what it’s about, who’s in it? This England Test team at the moment are fantastic, they are brilliant, very, very exciting but you never know which broadcaster has it, Test Match Special used to be one of life’s great constants, even that’s been mucked about.
I feel sorry for the players, if you ask who they play for. Some of them have to reel off about five teams.
Yes, “do you mean my team in India or some place in the desert?”
Oh yes, all that stuff with games being played out in Dubai or wherever it is.
It’s awful and to be honest it very alienating. I do think that it’s to the detriment of cricket. How does a young person get into it these days. I know they talk about The Hundred but, no, not for me.
You mentioned about taking your son to 20/20 games, Did that foster any interest for him?
It did for a while, but I think, to be honest that it’s petered out. He’s been to Test’s with me. He’ll call me up and say “Can we make Preston away on a Tuesday night”, poor sod, he’s a hardcore QPR fanatic and that’s his priority. He still likes cricket and actually, where I’m living now, there is a Net nearby and he has recently bought a bat, so we can go and play. He almost prefers playing it to watching it. Although, again, he plays football more regularly than he plays cricket.
I took my wife to cricket a couple of times. Lords, she loved as a place, she didn’t understand what was going on for a single moment, but she loved the majesty of Lords.
I have a story about visiting Lords from a few years ago.
Myself and two friends who are a similar age to me, so at the time we were in our fifties or sixties. One of them was a member of the MCC of quite longstanding, he’s the cricket friend who has moved away. Anyway, he said, let’s go to a county game, get dressed up, go in the Long Room, all that stuff. It was for Middlesex against Yorkshire I think.
So, the three of us put on our suits and ties, it was a beautiful hot summers day. We went for a nice lunch at a nearby restaurant first, to be honest it was more about the experience than the match. We arrived at Lords, after a splendid lunch with a good bottle of wine! My friend had his MCC pass, and we had tickets for the game, we went to go into the Long Room and we were stopped by these two stewards. They looked at us, we were absolutely immaculate, suits, shirts with collars, ties. We were really dressed up.
One of them just shook his head.
We said, why? What’s the matter?
One of the three of us, and it wasn’t me! Had no socks on. He had a suit and loafers.
The steward looked at us and said, “No Socks. You cannot come into Lords with no socks. We are not Italian!”
So, we had to go and buy a pair of socks, just to watch a cricket match. And I’m really glad that the steward did that, I would have been disappointed if he hadn’t turned us back.
Standards need to be upheld.
Exactly!
We touched upon Test Match Special earlier. As a kid were you glued to the radio listening to that?
Yes I was. I’m old enough to remember Arlott and that sort of era. We all know those classic moments, the batsman’s Holding, the bowlers Willey and that sort of stuff. One of my real delights as a kid of 13, 14, 15 or so, maybe before you discovered other things, was having a radio under your pillow at night listening to a match taking place on the other side of the world. I used to love that. I’ve sort of always preferred cricket on the radio to television.
They were fantastic raconteurs. As someone who partially made their career out of radio, I know how tough it is to talk for that long, when rain has stopped play. They can do it effortlessly. And I love that about cricket.
I still turn to it now. I do have Sky but to be honest, I sort of gave up on it last summer. I didn’t get up early to watch games, which I would normally have done in the past. I think that, with a Test series, if you get ensnared at the beginning, you are hooked in for the series. It’s sort of passed me by a bit for the last couple of years, even though I’m very aware that they are playing some extraordinary cricket.
Also, I think that with cricket more than almost any other sport due to the time it takes, the personalities are important. You are spending a lot of time with these people, so the more you know their personalities, the more you like or dislike these people, this becomes really important. If I’m watching people and I don’t know who they are, or anything about them and they are just smashing 6’s everywhere, it kind of, doesn’t mean anything to me.
And cricket is odd. Although it’s a team sport it comes down to the bowler versus the batter.
It’s a series of duels.
That’s an excellent description. You need to be invested in those characters, as well as the team, to really make it work.
Yes, I agree.
Thinking of books about cricket, I remember that last summer you had John L Williams on your show discussing his book about C.L. R James
That’s a terrific book. I actually interviewed C.L.R. James, he was very elderly at the time. I went down to his office on Railton Road in Brixton. He was one of the most extraordinary human beings that I have ever been in a room with. Obviously I’d read Beyond A Boundary, it’s an extraordinary book. He was in his eighties when I met him, he still had the most enquiring eyes that I’ve ever witnessed. We talked about cricket, the West Indies were still in their absolute pomp and you could see the joy that this brought him. The fact that the great grandchildren of slaves, had turned things round. Certainly Beyond A Boundary has been a very important book.
Also there was one that I read last year called That Will Be England Gone: The last Summer of Cricket by Michael Henderson. That was a very good book.
I got into baseball at one point, I used to spend quite a lot of time in New York, I became a Mets fan. There is a great tradition of writing around Baseball, which is kind of similar to the way that people write about cricket. It’s the literary sport in America. There’s a guy called Roger Angell, who died recently in his 90’s. He was the great, great writer of baseball. There were a couple of times where he wrote about cricket, having come over and watched it. Those stick in my mind.
It feels like there is a link between cricket and baseball. The length of the game, the number of days they spend playing during the season.
There’s also the geometry, it’s about angles. They call football the beautiful game, and it can be. It can though be brutal and all sorts of other things. Whereas I think cricket is always intrinsically beautiful. I’m absolutely a city boy, I’m not over fond of the country. There is that incredible delight that you get when every now and then, you’ll be driving through the countryside and chance upon a village green, and there is a game going on. I just feel compelled to sit and watch for half an hour. It doesn’t matter how good or inept the players are, sometimes the more inept the better. There is something mesmerising about a cricket field. It doesn’t even have to be the most picturesque setting. It’s just that thing of, the game.
I think it’s a real shame, that particularly in the south, that there is so little working class cricket anymore. There certainly used to be when I was growing up. Although Lords was posh, and I was very aware that it was posh, you saw street cricket being played a lot.
Now the only kids that play cricket around here are the Asian ones. We used to play street cricket, chalk wickets on the walls and play all the time. You don’t see that anymore.
It’s funny you say that. In the centre of Bristol there is a large roundabout with a pedestrianised inner circle. A few weeks ago, I was walking through that and there were a couple of kids playing cricket. I surpassed myself actually. One of them hit a nice cover drive but it was in the air and I caught it. Your out, I said. He quickly replied, no, your foot was over the boundary, that’s a 6!
You actually caught it. Well done!
I was shocked myself. It was great to see them playing. They bought their own stumps and balanced against a wall. Used to love seeing dustbins for wickets.
(Recent street cricket in Bristol)
That was one of the things that was so extraordinary, when we spent a little time in Mumbai. It made your heart soar, there was a cricket match on every corner at every time of day. All levels of sophistication, it was so heart-warming to see that.
Did you catch much of that in Jamaica?
Yes. It was more beach cricket in the Caribbean, I’ve travelled quite a bit there and you still see a lot of beach cricket there. Sadly I went to Jamaica last year and there was game going on when we were there (not an England test) and it was three quarters empty. It was really sad. I feel that the Caribbean has lost its love of cricket.
The talk is that the draw is more Basketball these days as the rewards are higher.
Yes, and Football. Though cricketers these days aren’t badly paid if you are playing at a high level.
It’s clear that Test cricket is your favourite format of the game.
Yes, it’s Test cricket by a long, long distance. To be honest, if Test cricket were to be phased out, I would have zero interest in the game. I’m not saying I can’t watch the other versions but they are just that, other versions of the real thing. It’s the purest essence of the game. If you keep reducing it, to boundaries and wickets, which is what it’s in danger of becoming. You’ve lost “the game” it just becomes a slog fest. It’s just brute strength with no finesse. Cricket should always be about finesse. Much as I criticised Tavaré, earlier, I like batters who can go out and stay there and build an innings. It’s not fashionable anymore.
But it’s part of the game.
Absolutely it is. But all sports seem to be doing this. I like cycling and track cycling used to have a thing where they just stand, it’s called a track stand. When there were two of them competing in a particular sprint, they would stand on their bikes for five or ten minutes and then they outlawed that, saying you could only wait for thirty seconds as it wasn’t a great spectacle. But that spectacle of watching two blokes balancing on a bike for half an hour was phenomenal! It’s the same when you have a batter just blocking and blocking, I love all of that.
Finally. Is there anything that you would change about cricket?
I’d stop changing it, is what I’d change. I’d stop introducing new formats and new tournaments and new outfits. Do you know what I mean? I think cricket needs, a bit of a “back to basics”.
Thank you again Robert for your time, and your thoughts and memories.
Click on the image below to visit Robert’s web site which includes information on his books, including his forthcoming book which covers his love of live music.
My next cricket (and more) chat is with Dan Whiting. Dan will be familiar to many cricket fans for his commentary work. He is especially well known in the West Country, after joining forces with Ian Randall to provide commentary for the Gloucestershire stream last season. Worth mentioning that you can also listen to this at the ground, via a nifty little earpiece that you can purchase from the club shop.
As well a being an enthusiastic club cricketer for many years, he is now a qualified umpire.
He was a major contributor the the cricket blog The Middle Stump and has written several books. These have mostly been about cricket, there is though, one covering the highs (and lows) of supporting Barnet Football Club. He has also written for The Cricket Paper
Thanks for taking the time to have this chat Dan. What are your earliest memories of cricket?
I always went down to the West Country for my summer holidays, in fact I still stay in a little village called Winscombe, when I’m working in Bristol. I have an uncle down there who is cricket mad, he bowled at me on the lawn and taught me the square cut, which I’ve been out to about a hundred times during my club cricket career!
That, and watching it on TV. I think the 1976 West Indians was the first series that I really remember. With Viv Richards getting that 291 at The Oval. Then the 1977 Ashes series against Australia. After that, from 1978, I was a massive David Gower fan, he was my god. I had two heroes growing up, he was one, the other was Wayne Daniel the Middlesex fast bowler.
(David Gower and Dan – They haven’t changed a bit since 1978)
Quite different cricketer’s
Yes, unfortunately I couldn’t bowl at the speed of light, or bat left-handed. So, I couldn’t emulate either of them!
Did you go for the David Gower curly perm look?
No, I didn’t. And I’ve got even less chance of pulling that off these days.
Aside from watching games on TV, did you go and watch games as a child? Obviously watching cricket can be expensive.
Yes, I did, it was much cheaper back then, I remember my mum would take me down to Lords. When I was about ten or eleven, I would be playing for my borough (Haringey) on a Saturday morning, playing for my club side on a Sunday morning. Then often (on a Sunday), we would go over to Lords to watch a John Player League match, with some of my teammates. When I was down in Winscombe, I’d go and watch Somerset, went to Clarence Park in Weston-super-Mare.
Now I watch cricket full time, I think it’s been engrained in me. If it’s installed in you at an early age, it’s a bit like a drug. The John Player League was the gateway drug.
Yes, that was the cheap taster. Then they lure you into the harder stuff, Championship cricket and Test matches.
Exactly!
You mentioned playing club cricket at a young age. Who introduced you to that?
I got into my Borough side at Haringey and also played at the North London Cricket Club, so I was just playing nonstop. At about fourteen or fifteen, I joined the club that I’m still involved with, Southgate Adelaide, playing at The Walker Ground. I was playing under 15’s, under 17’s and for the Second XI on the weekend. Also going for a net as well, so I was involved with playing cricket, well, probably six days a week.
So your Mum was washing a lot of kit I imagine!
Yeah, I was bought up in a single parent family. What parents do is amazing really. She would do a full day at work, then drive through the London rush hour to go to places like Brondesbury or Winchmore Hill, its not easy.
I was chatting with Nick Bracey, the father of James Bracey when Gloucestershire played at Radlett in the Royal London game last season. The effort that they have put in for their boys is amazing. It must be so hard for them when they see uncomplimentary stuff that’s written about James. Especially after those England appearances, with what was going around on social media. It’s not nice to read. I just think that anyone who has made it to professional cricket, has played to a better level than I, so I’ll not knock them. As for James, he is too good a player to only get those couple of caps and he still has time on his side. He’ll come back, internationally speaking.
What did you bring to the team Dan? Where you a stylish batter like Gower, or a pace merchant like Daniel?
Well, I used to bowl Off breaks, until I got the yips.
I reckon that by the age of 23-24, I’d picked up about 500 wickets for my club. The suddenly, I just couldn’t pitch it. I was bowling beamers, double bouncers, it’s the worst phenomena, the yips. I think Eric Bristow got it in his Darts career. Suddenly, he just couldn’t let go of the dart. It’s so strange, I don’t know why it happened.
I changed to opening the batting, I had to morph into something else to keep playing. Previously I’d batted at about 7 or 8 but I managed to turn myself into an opening bat.
I understand that in later years you turned to umpiring. How did you find the challenge of that role?
I love it!
I’d encourage everyone who plays club cricket to do the ECB ACO course. There was stuff that I learnt on the level 1 course, having played the game for 30-35 years. I’ve now completed level 2 and considering doing my level 3 as well. I got to umpire about 8 or 9-times last season but obviously commentating on Gloucestershire comes first.
I really enjoy it when I get the chance. I had to stop playing about nine years ago, my knees had gone. So, this is a great way to be involved in the game. We are in the Hertfordshire league, decent standard. A number of Pro’s have come through in recent years. People like Monty Panesar, Steven Finn, George Scott who left Gloucestershire last season.
That’s an interesting point Dan. Increasingly with football, players are locked into the academy setup from a young age. It’s difficult to arrive later in life from outside the closed ranks of the professional world. Cricket, although it’s changing, feels like you may still be able to “get serious” at a later stage. Do you think that’s true, or am I just holding on to a romantic notion?
Yes, very much. There’s a guy called Jack White at Northants whose gone through that. Also Jack Brooks, whose a mate of mine and who I’ve worked with for Melanoma UK, he came from village cricket in Oxfordshire, finally making into the Northants set up when he around 23.
I think cricket is very different in other ways as well. I think the players are much more approachable, just blokes like you or I. They don’t tend to be “up themselves”, playing the game doesn’t seem to change them. There may be one or two exceptions but generally they are good guys.
It’s true. Both from attending games and also the Walkers and Talkers events that Andy Brassington has been arranging at Gloucestershire. I’ve chatted to so many current and ex-players.
Talking of Walkers and Talkers, what Andy Brassington is doing there is amazing. It looks like a few other counties are taking on that concept now. It’s just going to Somerset with Andy at the helm and Middlesex are doing something similar.
They have become really important mornings, for lots of people. Andy is so welcoming; he makes people feel part of it.
I think that epitomises Gloucester though. It’s one of the warmest, friendliest clubs on the circuit. I feel very lucky that I’ve found Gloucestershire. The staff have been so supportive, from Will Brown and Neil Prescott (CEO and Deputy CEO), Jack Longstaff too. Jon Hook from the community team is teaching me Bristolian. It won’t be long before I’m referring to people as “Me Babbers”!
I think we are lucky to have you as well Dan. It’s a mutual appreciation.
I just wanted to ask you about your journey to the position that you find yourself in now. It’s not been the conventional route. For a long period, you had a fairly “normal” life. You had a job that didn’t involve sport, you were a proper grownup for quite a while. Then along came the phenomenon of the blog “The Middle Stump”. What prompted you to start it? How did you keep up the enormous number of blog posts? Also, how did you deal with the huge amount of public interest?
Yes, it was a relative success. I started it with a guy called Liam Kenna in 2012, we had over a million hits on the site! That encourages you to write!
We ended up interviewing a number of cricketers, but also people who were celebrities who like the game. We did an interview with Piers Morgan, which he tweeted out to his seven million followers, and it just went mad. I really enjoyed doing it, don’t really have time to do it now as I’m doing paid work. Gloucestershire in the summer, I also do TalkSPORT punditry with Paul Ross. Also I’ve written a few books, may even have another one in the pipeline but I can’t say too much about it at the moment, other than, it will have a Gloucestershire link. So not really got any space for the blog.
In addition to the books, you also got involved with Dan Norcross and his Test Match Sofa/Guerilla Cricket set up.
Yes, it’s the way I got into commentary really. Working with Dan and a guy called Nigel Henderson. Also Aatif Nawaz whose now on the BBC and a number of people who’ve moved into the higher echelons of cricket.
It was just chaos, were working out of an old studio in central London with loads of cans of Stella and air that was thick with cigarette smoke. It was horrendous really, but great fun. It was a good learning curve. Dan’s a good guy, he was someone to learn from.
It was a fascinating time. The emergence of that sort of broadcasting and several high performing blogs. It almost reminds me of what punk did for music. Suddenly, and I use this phrase lovingly, the plebs took over.
I agree. I interviewed Mike Selvey a few years back. He said that the new “on line stuff” intrigued him. He’d always written for newspapers and everyone got their news the next day. Suddenly the internet changed the whole concept of cricket reporting. Now the internet has changed County Cricket with live streaming of games.
It seemed to be quite liberating for the game. In the past the higher end of broadcasting and journalism were tightly controlled by a small number of gatekeepers. Suddenly comment and opinion was opened up, something that was needed.
Yes, I think so. It was quite a clique, a bit of an old boys network. What we are seeing now, is a new brand of commentator coming through. For instance, me, with my dulcet North London tones wouldn’t have been touched with a bargepole 15 years ago. Yet now Gloucestershire are happy to give me a go.
How did this arrangement come about?
I was doing some work for the BBC, was covering a game in Bristol, Gloucestershire v Northants at the end of the 2021 season. Doing all 4 days for BBC Bristol as they didn’t have anyone. I made contact with the club and mentioned that I would be interested if they were after anyone for their stream in the future. They booked me in for the game against Durham and Zafar Gohar bowled them out in two days, so two of my days work were down the Swanee! I blame Zafar for costing me some money!
Anyway, Ed Seabourne moved from the Gloucestershire stream to a role at Radio Bristol, so there was a vacancy. I got a phone call in around February of last year, asking if I would like the job. I thought about it for around ten seconds, and said yes, I’d love to.
Living in North London, it’s still quite a commitment on your part, especially for 4 day games.
It is, but having family in the West Country makes it easier. Also, everyone has made me feel so welcome down in Bristol. That’s from the players, the staff and the fans. It’s just been wonderful. We have a real laugh doing this. We’ve got James Healey on the production side, who’s a genius, one of the best in the country at what he does.
Also Ian Randall as well, he’s a great guy. When I first met him, I thought that I had nothing in common with him. He doesn’t drink, doesn’t like curry or any spicy food, lives a very different sort of life. Yet we’ve become really good mates, we phone each other up once a week for a chat during the off season, we’ve become really good friends. He’s a top man.
We are all quite different characters but we have a really good laugh, off air as well.
(Ian, James and Dan)
When listening to the commentary, you can tell when people are just working together, or when they are enjoying each other’s company. You bring different, but very compatible skills to the job.
I hope that comes across. He tells me that he came 3rd in the BBC young journalist of the year in 1990, now I reckon he was probably about 55 in 1990, so I’m not sure if I should believe him on that. He also bakes a very good cake. He brings in what we now call “The Rascal Cake”, it’s very good. He’s a bit of a Mary Berry on the quiet.
It probably helps that you spent a bit of time in Bristol as a young man as well.
Yes, I got sent down there to live with my cousin because I hadn’t done a lot of work in school. I went to Filton to retake some stuff and I probably did even less work when I got to Bristol! But I had a bloody good time. I lived in Montpelier for a bit, then Redland. Then, and I’m not sure how, I ended up with the poshest address in Bristol, at a student flat in Royal York Crescent in Clifton.
I went to college and worked behind the bar at the student union. Then I stayed on for a little bit, working for Clerical Medical in the centre.
I loved Bristol. I was really into the music scene, it was 87/88 so there were warehouse parties with the like of The Wild Bunch who went on to become Massive Attack, Portishead who were getting going. Indie stuff like The Brilliant Corners, Rorschach were from Bristol as well. The music scene was fantastic and that still carries on today, there’s a band called Adult Leisure who I really like. They have the 80’s jingly jangly Smiths/Housemartins feel to them. I was always into indie stuff like the Smiths and The Cure, then the “Madchester” scene, into the Britpop scene, then bands like Bloc Part and The Futureheads and Hard-Fi.
Any venues in Bristol that you particularly remember?
The Bristol Bridge Inn, I remember going to a warehouse party, somewhere around the back of Hotwells, it’s probably a luxury flat now! That was curtailed by a police raid. Also a warehouse near Temple Meads railway station where I saw The Wild Bunch. Actually when I was a college in Filton, I was in an English class with Andrew Vowles, who was better known as Mushroom in The Wild Bunch/Massive Attack. He was a nice guy.
The thing about Bristol, is that for such a small city, it punches above its weight in the arts. Be it music, or street art, I love it when I get into Bristol, seeing the street art as I drive up the Gloucester Road. Even in the Gloucestershire ground at the Seat Unique stadium, you have work on the club offices by Silent Hobo. It’s different. It’s interesting and I like it. What’s also interesting is the way the food that we get when commentating reflects the city. We get what the players have, we will get a tagine with cous cous or something like that, quite different from other grounds, where the offering may be more, shall we say, traditional.
As I mentioned, Ian doesn’t like spicy food, so James Healy and I normally have his as well.
Let’s talk a little about something that I know is close to your heart, The impact of streaming of County Cricket. As a football fan, I get a little worried about more and more football being available to watch from home. I want people to be at the games, generating the atmosphere that I’ve been used to over many years.
County Cricket is somewhat different, in our lifetime, we haven’t seen big crowds at county games. Last season a couple of things stood out for me. The game at Worcester when Ben Stokes went on that incredible rampage of big hitting. Also that last game of the season when Warwickshire played Hampshire, eventually pulling off that remarkable victory to avoid relegation.
In both cases, word spread via social media, suddenly thousands and thousands of people from all over the country were logging on to watch these dramatic stories unfold. Something we could not have envisaged a few years ago.
I assume that you think this is a good development, particularly as it gives you some work. Also, what do you think about the longer term impact of streaming on County Cricket?
Yes, I think it’s very good for the county game. It raises interest, and as you mentioned some of the figures are amazing. I think that when Leicestershire played India last season, they had around 400,000 people watching one day. The Gloucestershire stream had around 2,000 000 over the season which is decent. I think that the Yorkshire game at the start of the season had around 250,000. There was a lot of interest in Yorkshire after their “winter of discontent”.
I think it’s a very good thing. It started with the BBC taking on County Cricket commentary, which has evolved now into streaming. All the counties do it very differently, according to budget. Some take the feed from the BBC. Now there can be ways of raising venue for the county but you have to be careful, if you are using the BBC feed for that. I think that’s why counties are getting their own streaming teams. There aren’t many who have their own commentary teams. There’s us at Gloucestershire, Somerset, Middlesex and I think Surrey do it for certain games. Oh and Essex do it for T20’s. A lot of them take their feed from the BBC. The quality all depends on your budget and how many cameras, and staff you can get. I think that for the money we have at Gloucestershire, we punch above our weight. I think we stand out, the look of the stream is good, with the colours and the fonts. It seems to be popular and has gone down well.
I think I mentioned this to you at one point last summer. When I watched some of the other county streams, I’ve noticed that they can become totally focused on the “home” county. The one that stood out for me, was the Hampshire one, it really seemed like the Gloucestershire players were a bit of an inconvenience that day. The talk was all about the Hampshire players, a Gloucestershire player bowling well, taking a great catch or playing a lovely shot hardly merited a mention.
The thing that I really like about the way that you and Ian approach it, is the respect, and interest in the other team. That’s seems to bring some great engagement with the fans from Yorkshire, Lancashire, whoever it may be, as well as the Gloucestershire supporters. As someone who listens at the ground, I love to hear that.
Yes. Interactions key, we love getting emails from people (it makes our job a lot easier!). The Lancashire fans were superb last season, we had a lot of chat about the Black Pudding throwing competition in Ramsbottom, which then went onto all sorts of Lancastrian dishes. Hot Pot’s, Rag Pudding to whatever. Warwickshire fans were good as well.
(Gloucestershire’s Number 1 fan with Dan, I don’t think he sends in many emails though)
Also, I like the insight that you and Ian and share on the players from the other team. You prime us well on things and players to keep an eye on. Who is in good form, who is coming back from a spell out with injury, who has maybe changed their action a bit recently. All stuff that adds to the interest and enjoyment of the game.
I do a weekly podcast in the summer called “County Cricket Natters” with Annie Chave and Sam Dalling, so we are constantly doing a roundup of all the county games. You get to know, who is scoring runs, or taking wickets. It’s nice then, to share that information.
Plus Ian and I probably do about 6 or 7 hours of research before a game on the opposition players, squad numbers, averages etc.
I think that the County game is much maligned. I think that there is more interest in it now, than there has ever been and streaming has a part to play in that. You hear certain people talking about certain counties being culled. Leicestershire have probably been the worst performing county in recent years and would be red hot favourites to be culled if that were to happen.
It’s hugely important that we keep the 18 counties. Look at Rehan Ahmed, if he had stayed at Notts, would he have a chance there? Probably not, it’s hugely important that we develop talent like Rehan Ahmed. Stuart Broad started at Leicestershire as well, those smaller counties are much maligned, but they have a place to play in the game. County Cricket is the university for people who will play Test Cricket, it’s the finishing school. Test Cricket is what brings the Sky deal, it’s what attracts 32,000 people to Lords for 5 days drinking beer at £7 a pint. You need County cricket to develop those players into Test cricketers.
It’s a strange upside of the dreadful Covid situation that streaming had a boost at that time. People couldn’t go to games but there was a desire to watch them, which streaming provided. Also people working from home, maybe had the iPad or the laptop on the corner of the table and had the cricket on at the same time.
It gave people a chance to reengage with there local county. After watching a few games, you start to build an affinity with players. So people working from home, has provide a big boost in interest for the county game.
Yes, I have to agree with you on that. The numbers are a testament to it.
Cricket is also a little odd, because all the best players aren’t necessarily playing in Division 1. Just look at the Durham side. It’s great that top quality players can appear at grounds all over the country, giving the whole cricket fanbase a chance to see great players, both overseas players as well as homegrown ones.
I think the players love it as well. Zafar Gohar is loved in Bristol and has just signed a new deal, even though I think that there was a lot of interest from other people. As you would expect for someone who scored over 500 runs and took 50 wickets last year. Then you have Marcus Labuschagne at Glamorgan, one of the best players in the world, I’m really looking forward to seeing him. It might be Division Two but there is still quality to watch. You get to see some really good cricketers, we saw Naseem Shah for a short while last season, he made an impact. I thought Haris Rauf was a bit quicker. I remember him bowling to Marcus Harris at Bristol and Harry Dukes the Yorkshire keeper was standing miles back, you don’t even go that far on your holidays! He bowled a bouncer and flew through Dukes hands for 4 byes, and you thought, wow!
I’m a massive fan of the county game, also I think that the Royal London Cup has a place in the calendar.
I can’t wait to get back involved again. Looking forward to seeing the Gloucestershire team. Really looking forward to watching Tom Price who I think has a massive future ahead of him. Also a few players who were on the fringes a bit last year, Tom Lace could play a big part this year, also Josh Shaw and Jared Warner. They are quality bowlers, hopefully we can get a decent set of balls this time around, they could then have a part to play.
It’s a big year for Dale Benkenstein as well. Last year was a transitional one, it wasn’t his side really, so he was finding his feet a little bit. They were caught cold a bit at the start of the season. Now he’s had a winter to recruit and has his coaching team in place. I think Gloucestershire could be there or there abouts.
(Tom Price with Dan)
Some different teams to play, looking forward to hopefully getting to places like Worcester to watch Gloucestershire.
It’s great there, they have a ladies pavilion with staff in pinnies selling lovely lemon cake for next to no money. You see the members sitting on the steps covered in crumbs. It’s like a throwback to a different world, it’s great. I love it there.
In a similar vein, I love watching cricket at Outgrounds, sadly there are less options every season for this though. The Walker Ground where I play Club Cricket has been used in the past. It was a privilege to cover cricket from Cheltenham last season.
There are so many lovely grounds, Arundel, Scarborough, Tunbridge Wells, Chesterfield. It’s part of the fabric of the game. Also stadiums have changed over the years. You go to Sophia Gardens now and there is a lot of concrete. The view to the ground from the city centre is lovely but when you are there, you see a lot of grey walls. It’s happening a lot; you see it in Australia as well. I was a big fan of people sitting the bank with 24 tinnies, abusing the English but those days are gone.
Finally, if you could change one thing about cricket, what would it be?
Make lunch longer!
No seriously, I’d review the LBW rule. I think that possibly you should be out to a ball pitching outside leg stump. Also, on the off side, if the impact is outside the line and you are playing a shot, you can’t be out. I think that if the ball is going on to hit the stumps, why shouldn’t you be given out?
Maybe look at changing that.
Also put in something definitive about the Mankad. It’s become so divisive. Maybe the batter should be able to leave the crease, once the back foot lands. That could clear up a lot of the rubbish that is going on.
(Dan and Ian hard at work)
Dan then kindly mentioned that he was a big fan of this Rain Stopped Play.Inspection at 3 blog. Indeed he has been very supportive of it in the past. It’s good to shine a bit of a light on Gloucestershire cricket, and to hopefully do so with a bit of humour. It was great to chat with him for an hour or so for this piece.
My next guest for a cricketing chat is author and journalist Jon Hotten. One of the few people to have written about Geoffrey Boycott and American rock band Mötley Crüe. If that wasn’t enough he has also written on the crazy world of Bodybuilding, the murky world of unlicensed boxing and the sedate and sensible world of cricket.
He has written extensively on music, spending time in Los Angeles in the late 80’s he covered rock music for Kerrang and still contributes to Classic Rock.
His cricket writing come to prominence through his blog The Old Batsmen and he also contributes to The Cordon Cricket Blog at cricinfo.
Thank you for taking the time to have this chat Jon. Let’s start by asking you, what is your earliest memory of cricket?
Ah, that’s really hard, just because you get these false memories sometimes. I’ve got a really clear memory of being in my mum and dads kitchen, the summer that Rhinestone Cowboy by Glen Campbell was on the radio as it was a hit (1975, making Jon 10 years old). I remember, I had my first bat, which was a Stuart Surridge one, it cost £4 from Fleet Sports, which sadly is no longer going. I also had these little spiked batting gloves, which I‘ve still got.
I always wondered if they were any good?
Well, they were ok, I wasn’t facing Michael Holding, so they did their job.
I remember that period quite clearly. I also remember the smell of Linseed oil, you used to oil your own bats back then. They don’t do that anymore. The smell of that, with dad teaching me how to do it, applying the different coats lightly, Sort of sense memories really.
The first cricket that I really remember going to was in 1976. That was the second day of the fifth Test against The West Indies at The Oval. I very clearly remember that. Viv Richards was 200 odd not out overnight, and he went on to get 291. England batted for a short time that night after the West Indies declared. I remember really clearly, the guys that were sitting behind us, they had binoculars and they were arguing over who was going to have the binoculars when Dennis Amiss was facing, as everyone thought Amiss was going to get cleaned up by Holding and Roberts. Actually he went on to get a double hundred as well. I only found out subsequently, that he changed his stance, to go very chest on to the bowlers.
I really remember that day very vividly, I also started playing around that time as well. All of those memories from that time, kind of intermingle.
I expect that the atmosphere at The Oval would have been pretty special, with all the support for the West Indies side.
Yes, in retrospect it was amazing, at the time I had nothing to compare it to. I remember that back then, you used to sit on these benches that were rock hard, so you would buy these seat cushions and the West Indies fans used to chuck them on the pitch, if they were particularly pleased or annoyed by something. Obviously I didn’t understand the whole significance of that tour at the time, The Windrush Generation, the time of Punk, the time of strikes. The summer saw a heatwave, so the ground was completely brown. When you look back at it, it was quite an interesting time in Britain.
I remember how different the West Indies team were to the England team. The England team were a really oddball bunch. Amiss had come back into the side. David Steele was still playing, with his grey hair and glasses. Tony Greg being massively tall, like Basil Fawlty who was also famous at the time. Alan Knott behind the stumps, Derrek Underwood looking like a university lecturer with his combover. They just all looked kind of old, especially when you were young.
The West Indies were just completely different. You had Holding and Richards, it was the summer that Viv really started to make his mark, I think he broke the record for the most Test runs in a year. They were just incredibly athletic , their bowling was so much faster. Their fielding was insanely good. And the way they hit the ball! I’d maybe seen a bit of club cricket but the contrast between that and what I saw that day was incredible.
I remember that early in the day Richards hit one out towards the boundary. Bob Woolmer, another England player who looked older, sort of a Billy Bunter figure. He ran after it, and threw it back in, I just couldn’t believe how far he could throw it. I couldn’t believe that this was really happening. The whole thing did leave quite a deep impression on me.
You mentioned your Dad and him guiding you through oiling your bat. Did he play at any sort of level?
No, he wasn’t much of a player. He was a good bowler though. He died a couple of years ago at 93, which is a great knock. He would bowl at me endlessly because he had great ambitions for my batting. I was intimately acquainted with his action, he didn’t do anything with the ball but he could put it on the spot. In those days, before people started hitting length bowling out of cricket, that was a real art. We would play endlessly in the back garden.
He never really played club cricket, but he took me to start playing club cricket. Also in the Winters in my teens he took me to Alf Gover’s cricket school in Wandsworth. That was another place where I really learned about the game. Then I started playing Club Cricket and I did alright.
Who did you play for?
I started playing for Fleet, my local club in Hampshire, which is a lovely ground. The other really formative event just after I started playing for Fleet, was when Hampshire came down to Fleet to play a benefit game. Barry Richards played; he was my great hero. So, having him playing at Fleet that afternoon, well I still remember it incredibly vividly now. He hit a 6 over the trees onto the Pitch and Putt course. He scored about 60. We drove him mad in the pavilion trying to get his autograph, it was just a brilliant, brilliant day.
He’s been called the most romanticised player in the world. Which is probably true because he missed out on his Test career. He scored about twelve hundreds before lunch! Amazing, fabulous player. Sadly there is very little film of him batting.
There was him and Viv Richards. As a little kid I couldn’t understand that they weren’t related. They were both called Richards and were great batters. Maybe they were brothers? I had no idea what was going on!
After Fleet, I played for a little village club called Wrecclesham. We were a really good side, I still know some of the guys who played in that side. Three of the team were the Thorpe brothers Ian, Alan and Graham. Graham obviously went on to have quite a career. Ian and Alan, his older brothers were both terrific cricketers as well, Ian was the captain of the youth team. We played in that team and did pretty well. Geoff their dad was captain of the first XI. Their mum Toni was the scorer, so it was a real family endeavour.
There were some good cricketers at what was basically a village team. The Thorpe brothers went on to play at Farnham, which was a bigger club with a nice ground and I think they all did well there.
Graham is the youngest, a few years younger than me. At that age when I was playing with them it was quite a gap but even then, Ian and Alan would say that Graham is way better than both of us. Even though he couldn’t really hit the ball off the square, just because physically he was too small. All the brothers were incredibly competitive.
There were lots of good players around the area, so it was a really good cricketing education.
It sounds like you took playing cricket pretty seriously. Did that mean that you didn’t get to watch much cricket?
Yes, didn’t get to see much. I remember that when I played at Basingstoke, Hampshire used to use it as an Outground. It’s a shame that it’s not used now, it’s a lovely ground. It’s quite famous in Hampshire history as Andy Roberts felled Colin Cowdry there, actually knocked him out.
We were allowed to work the scoreboard there, which was brilliant fun but semi terrifying as well. Hampshire had this scorer called Vic Isaacs, who was in a tent on the other side of the ground. He had a telephone that connected to the scoreboard.
We would be pissing about, then the phone would ring: “Oh Christ, it’s Vic Isaacs!” Sadly he died recently. Obviously it must drive you mad, if your job is to get the score right and these idiots are messing about, getting things wrong.
It was great though.
I remember carrying Jeff Thomson’s bag up into the pavilion at Basingstoke. It was a small ground so you were very close to the action, close to the players. You really got an idea of how good, the good players are.
Back in those days when every county apart from Yorkshire had two overseas players for the whole season, you could watch them close up. Richards, Greenidge, Andy Roberts, Malcolm Marshall. Marshall, I remember as a really young guy, bowling in the nets. You could get incredibly close to the players.
You need that thing that bonds you to the game at an early age. It’s an arcane game, impenetrable in many ways if you didn’t really grow up with it. It is difficult to understand, it has got a high bar for entry. So, when you have those sort of experiences as a kid, that’s what binds you to the game.
Was it your dad who talked you through the LBW law, the six balls to an over type stuff?
I think you just sort of absorb it. When you are a kid, you aren’t worried about the minutiae, you just get to understand it by watching it. I remember watching the ’81 series on TV during the school holidays. Such an amazing series.
Actually I’ve just remembered one winter when I was at Wrecclesham, they organised a quiz between all the local teams on the laws of cricket. So I spent ages boning up on the rules, so I probably learned them through that.
I think helps when you write about cricket, to have played. That doesn’t mean you have to play at a high level. Just playing the game will give you certain experiences whether you are amateur or professional. For instance, we can all have the experience of facing bowling that is, very slightly too quick for you. That could be 95 MPH or it could be 80 MPH, you still have the experience, the same emotion. The same with dropping a catch. You don’t feel any difference if you’ve dropped it as an amateur or a professional.
You can have these common experiences. I think that as a writer, that’s really helpful.
Excellent point. Just going back to learning the rules. At the same time that I was trying to understand Cricket, I started watching the Tennis on TV from Wimbledon. The scoring there really confused me, Love, 15, 30, 40?
You see I never realised why they did like that, until a few years ago we went and played Real tennis at Lords. They have a Real Tennis court there, which not many people know about. Now that really is a baroque and arcane sport! We had this guy showing how to play, he said that the scoring in Tennis is take from the quarter hours on the clock – Love = 0, 15, 30 and it 45 but because it was originally done in French, and 45 takes so long to say in French, they changed it to 40!
Ah, so there is a sort of logic after all. If I learn nothing else from these interviews that’s a fact that could come in handy one day. Thank you!
You’ve mention that West Indies team in 1976. Was there another game or series that really pulled in you in, cementing your love of the game?
Yes, I’m not sure how my dad did it, he was a building supervisor, nothing to do with cricket but he managed to get us tickets for some extraordinary games including the 1979 World Cup Final. Another incredible match, with another extraordinary innings from Viv Richards. It was England v West Indies and just to say how different things were then, it was 60 overs a side, rather than 50, in whites, they took lunch and tea, so the game was interrupted by those breaks as a test match would be. There wasn’t the idea of bowling 60 overs, then have a break and bowl the other 60. No, no, we have lunch and tea. I think West Indies made 286 from their 60 overs, Viv made136 not out from memory. A guy called Collis King an all-rounder played a key innings, getting 80 odd.
Back then 286 was thought of as being unsurmountable. How could England possibly get that in 60 overs? Impossible!
England went in, they opened with Boycott and Brierley, which another amazing thing! They had a really good batting side, Gooch, Gatting, Wayne Larkins. Anyway those two opened and put on 120 against Holding, Roberts and Joel Garner. They got to Tea and they were still in, I worked out recently that at that stage they needed about 140 off 30 overs to win after Tea, with wickets in hand. Everyone still though that was impossible. There was no way they could win it, they’ve started much too slowly. A target like that now that would be very straightforward. They didn’t do it, as Joel Garner bowled amazingly and they just couldn’t score off him.
As chance would have it, I’ve just done this book with Geoffrey Boycott, I grilled him about that game, It was really interesting to talk to him about that game (the book doesn’t really touch on his one day career), I think he said that it was the first time that ever wore a helmet for batting, he didn’t even practice in the nets. He just put it on and walked out! Incredible, seeing that he was so fastidious about everything.
Nowadays you’d be expected to win that game (chasing 140 off 30) nine times out of ten. After the game, you were allowed to go onto the pitch, so me and my dad ran across the pitch for the presentation in front of the pavilion, not something you could do now.
Then he got tickets for the 1983 World Cup Final, when India beat the West Indies. It turned out to be a key game in the history of cricket, as that win ignited India’s passion for one day cricket, shaping nature of the game from then until now.
I remember Kapil Dev catching Viv Richards. Viv never failed, especially in big games. We were on the other side of the ground watching Kapil Dev running to take the catch, the ground fell silent. Wow! Viv’s out! There were way more West Indians in the ground than Indians, well certainly in the Tavern area, and the place just went silent. Another amazing game.
You’ve spoken very fondly of many of those West Indian players. Were there any other players that particularly struck a chord with you, maybe inspiring the way you played?
Well my Dads great hero was Boycott, he got me a book called Geoff Boycott’s Book for Young Cricketers. It had those flick pages, so you could flick through and see how he played a forward defensive or a backwards defensive.
That was the first 200 pages then!
I’ve come to appreciate just how good he was. There is a story that he was just a technical player. He will say himself that he wasn’t as good as Viv Richards or Barry Richards. Given the pitches that he had to play on though, technique was very important. My dad was very big on technique, in kids cricket if you can keep out the good balls, you will score runs, as you would get 3 bad balls an over. As you play at a higher level that’s more difficult.
I had a friend called Simon Massey who was taken onto the Hampshire staff. Simon was the best player in Fleet. The best batter, the best bowler, able to bowl spin and seem, he was a brilliant fielder. Simon was really, really good. He went to Hampshire and couldn’t get in the team. Oddly a few years ago, when I wrote The Meaning of Cricket, I was at an event with Mark Nicholas who had a book out as well. I mentioned Simon to Mark and he said, yes I remember him well but he just wasn’t good enough to make it.
Mark Nicholas was a great captain of Hampshire but he will tell you that he, wasn’t quite good enough to become a Test player in the way that people around him like Robin Smith or Chris Smith were. So all the way along you find these levels. I wasn’t as good as Simon, Simon wasn’t as good as Mark, Mark wasn’t as good as Robin when he was 17. Robin was way better than anyone else in that game that I came across him as a youngster. He hit the ball so hard, was built like a prop forward. All I remember is how hard he hit the ball. Then again he loved playing fast bowling but he didn’t like spin. Maybe Shane Warne messed with head?
So, I think about these levels. I got this far. Robin got that far. What was it like to be Warne? Being a player that doesn’t find their ceiling, just goes all the way to Test cricket and is still the best player.
I remember being at Gover’s Cricket School, every now and again someone would turn up and catch your eye. Monte Lynch who played for Surrey was always there. I’ve got really vivid memories of him, he would turn up and absolutely belt the crap out of the ball, hit it so hard. The rafters would be reverberating when Monte was batting. There was another chap, who bowled left arm wrist spin, turned it both ways, was unplayable. No idea what happened to him. That’s the thing, the game is a combination of ability, opportunity, and luck. You have to have all of those things, if you are to get anywhere as a player.
It’s also unique in the psychological challenge, particularly with batting. A bowler can just walk back and bowler another ball. With a batter, it’s that one ball and you are gone. That’s the psychological pivot of the game, that’s what all the game’s psychology exists on.
And it drives people mad. Especially when your profession depends on it. Boycott was fascinating on the depression he would go into when he was out. He would be beating himself up for two or three days after a bad dismissal.
I remember interviewing Ricky Ponting once, he was talking about playing Harbhajan in India, the one blot on Ponting’ CV. Ponting was an amazing, brilliant player. A really interesting guy, see’s everything in cricket before everyone else does. If you listen to his commentary, he will pick up on these tiny little things that nobody does. Harbhajan just had the better of him though, got him out for fun in India. I said to him, “Does that still bother you?” This was years later. “Yeah” You could tell that he was reliving it in his head, going through those emotions.
Even now, I can think back to getting myself ten years ago, and it will annoy me. It still annoys me. I’ll think to myself, why did you do that, it was stupid. It’s just part of the game.
On a serious note, I think that psychological side of the game is why there is history of depression amongst cricketers. You can discuss, does cricket attract a certain type of personality, or does the act of playing hone those traits in your personality. I don’t know what the answer to that is. The suicide rate amongst cricketers is higher than the norm. Thankfully players now will turn up and say, my mental health is being affected by this. They live in an artificial and extraordinary world, living away from home for 200 days a year. It can’t help to be living like that.
Going back to Boycott, he didn’t play Test cricket from ’74 to ’77. Looking back now, he can see that was psychological pressure, something he didn’t realise at the time. It wasn’t that he couldn’t play, it was that various forces in his life affected him at that time.
Going back to players hitting the ceiling of their ability. With most ordinary players, you reach that when you are quite young. It could be that you are comfortable in the thirds but can’t make it the seconds. The professional though, has kept on rising, they smashed it at Club level. They keep moving up, so when they hit that ceiling it probably later in life and harder to deal with. They have this psychological rock, getting for twenty years of not failing as a player. When it does start that is a brand new experience for them.
Going back to your younger days, were there any cricket broadcasters or writers that particularly caught your attention?
Yes, quite a few I suppose. John Arlott was the main one, he lived in Basingstoke when he was a policeman. I can’t imagine what he was like in that job! Then his house was in Arlesford, not far away from Basingstoke. Also the other guys that were on TV at that time, Jim Laker, Peter West and Fred Truman on Test match special. I remember that I had a book by Truman on cassette, it was called Balls of Fire. Came out years after he retired. It was so non-PC, I don’t think you could listen to it now. I was only a little kid, listening to way he spoke about being unfaithful to his wife, when he was on tour: “I met this bird…” I clearly remember that.
In terms of writing, the one I really remember was Peter Roebuck, he wrote a book called it never rains, it was a diary of his season at Somerset in around 1983. I really loved that. Also a collection of his newspaper pieces, called Tangled up in White, I really enjoyed that. There was piece in there about Dean Jones scoring a hundred in Madras (now Chennai), and how he ended up on a drip after he scored the hundred. He’d been on the verge of collapsing at the crease and Allan Boarder (who was batting with him) was saying things like “If you want to walk off, I’ll get a Queenslander out here, Somebody who’s properly tough”. Dean Jones stays on, Roebuck wrote this brilliant piece about the aftermath of the innings, with Jones hallucinating in the shower. I remember having that book in my cricket bag and taking to games. Reading it before playing to get myself in the right mental to play cricket. Roebuck was really good.
Around the same time Matthew Engel was writing for The Guardian, he was a really good writer. I sat next to him once at a thing at Lords which was great. But all did, was go on about how terrible T20 cricket was.
The world of Jim Laker and Peter is so removed from what we have now, they were almost like bank managers rather that sports people.
Yes, even when Laker was playing the story goes that after he those 19 wickets in a match, he got the train home, went to the pub and had a sandwich. No glamour, that’s how it was then. You weren’t a big star. Going back to Boycott, in the 70’s when I was growing up, he was one of the two or three sports stars, not just cricket, who would be on the front page of a newspaper or go on the Parkinson chat show. Just people like George Best, Brian Clough, Boycott and maybe a couple of others who were famous enough to transcend the sport that they played.
Sporting fame was different then, it wasn’t until Botham came along and the tabloids got interested in him that things changed. He had that amazing series in ’81. Then the tabloids got interested in his marriage, then the situation in the West Indies and the alleged broken bed/ Miss World incident. That changed the game, he became famous beyond the sphere of cricket. The notion of cricketers becoming celebrities was new. It was so different then, you can’t really explain to people now, what it was like back then. Even the pace of finding stuff out was so different, you read it the paper or saw it on TV and that was that. You couldn’t go on Twitter to find out what Mike Gatting was up to.
Botham and Gower were the glamour boys. You look back now and Botham looks ridiculous with that mullet, but at the time, it was, “Doesn’t Botham look amazing with his mullet, so cool”. He was just a larger than life character, that changed the way sport was.
How about the current crop of commentators?
Well, the thing I get now, is how difficult it actually is. Dan Norcross, who is now part of the Test Match Special team, had this thing called Test Match Sofa, completely illegal broadcasting where him and his mates would watch the TV and commentate on the matches without having the rights. I got into cricket writing, had a blog called The Old Batsman. I was already a writer, but I didn’t really want to write about cricket, because I enjoyed doing other stuff with it. It came along in the glory years of blogging and Dan invited me along off the back of that. Test match Sofa was a lot like blogging about cricket, suddenly anyone who had a view on cricket could have a voice. It was all really democratising. You didn’t have to go through the official channels, there were even players getting involved with it.
One of the great early bloggers was Jarrod Kimber, he completely changed the way cricket was written about. He would write three blog posts a day; they could be inspired or ridiculous. They may just be about one delivery, really changing the way people consumed cricket.
Then when twitter came along it opened up even more. There was a famous Twitter account called something like “The Secret IPL Player” right at the start of the IPL, supposedly giving you inside stories from the IPL.
Dan invited me on to Test Match Sofa, I had to get up really early in the morning. It was so difficult; I’d thought that it was going to be really easy but it was really, really difficult. It was so hard to commentate, hard to even give an opinion on something. Dan though, was so good at it and has rightly gone on to the TMS team. Dan could confirm this, but I think that the whole idea of Test Match Sofa enraged Jonathan Agnew to the point that they either ended rowing about or just contacting each other to talk about it. It was decided that the only way to stop Dan was to bring him inside the tent! He’s a fantastic, natural broadcaster, you’ve either got that or you haven’t. Boycott’s another one. He’s a phenomenal talker. He will talk to you about anything with that fluency, they don’t “ahm” or “err”. It just comes out. And it makes sense, they are both great at that Michael Atherton is great at that as well.
Atherton has had these two amazing careers, he’s been England captain and The Times cricket correspondent, two major offices of the game and he’s been on Sky. He’s been brilliant at all of them. Looking back at his playing career, you think, God he was good. He averaged around 40, what England wouldn’t give for an opening bat who could do that now. He started his career facing Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Curtley Ambrose, Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh. Then the invention or reverse swing. Then Shane Warne, Muralitharan, then Glenn McGrath. Do you fancy batting in that era! Yet he scored lots of test runs, a really good player. Then he becomes a really good writer and commentator, thinks deeply about the game, produces really good stories. He never big’s himself up. Never goes on about “in my day…”. He is always really curious to learn. He doesn’t talk about his achievements in the game, if I’d had his career, I’d never shut up about it!
How about some favourite grounds that we may not have mentioned?
I do love The Oval, and friend has an office there, so it’s interesting, and a very different experience to there, when there isn’t any cricket on. I also love Arundel, I’ve played there a fair bit and watched games there as well. I lived in Australia for a while, The Gabba is amazing, they have rebuilt it since I was there, and I just heard they are doing that again because they are going to have the Olympics there at some point. You realise just how huge those grounds are in Australia, The Gabba is massive. But Queensland is so hot, the summer is relentless. You just realise how different cricket is there. The SCG is just an amazing ground as well.
When you travel around you realise that the genius of cricket, is the way it can respond to all these different conditions and give you a completely different game. You saw in the latest T20 World Cup, the games at Perth and Adelaide, where the wickets were quick, true and not overused, they were high scoring games. The games in Sydney and Melbourne were much lower scores because they were on used pitches. The difference between England’s semi-final and the final which was just days apart was massive. Almost like two different sports. That is the difference that the ground the game is played on makes, which is part of the genius of cricket.
When talking about grounds, that’s what I think about most. Changing conditions is what forces the constant reinvention of the game. Pakistan came up with reverse swing because the wickets there don’t do anything. Watching England there this winter, having not been there for a long time, you see these pitches where the ball doesn’t bounce, nothing happens, so Pakistan have Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah, Haris Rauf who can all do these different things. I remember a few years ago when Pakistan toured here. They had four left arm, over the wicket quicks and they were all completely different.
Sri Lanka as well, what a place. The batting and the bowling that has come from there, radically different to anywhere else. It’s all shaped by the environment. England had kind of missed out on that, was suspicious about change, There’s been a tradition here that the game’s always played in a certain way. It’s only since T20 came along, and 2015 when they completely reinvented how they play white ball cricket, that they have grasped this notion that they don’t have to be hidebound by the past.
Cricket is in love with the past, in a way that no other sport is. It’s constantly refereeing back to the past and things that have happened. England was particularly bound by that, I don’t think they are now. There is this fight going on at the moment between modernity and tradition, partially due to scheduling. That fight will be harder fought in England than it will be in other places. In other places they are more willing to let the past go, it doesn’t mean the same as it does here.
The one change that is bigger than any other, in the time that I have been playing cricket, is how hard the ball is hit. I was talking about Robin Smith hitting the ball hard earlier, well now everyone hits the ball hard. Young kids come along, and all they want to do is, smoke it. And they do! And that’s what the games all about. That’s the future, the game is there’s. Guys like Will Smeed come along thinking, why do I want to get knocked over by a red ball, when I can go out in the hundred and tee off, and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come off every time.
It’s a different psychology. One of the reasons why we struggle at 20/20 was that you had to assign a different value to your wicket, it wasn’t until Jason Roy and Joss Butler came along and said, look it doesn’t matter if I get out. I think they learnt that from different parts of the world.
The career that’s most interest to look at, has been that of Chris Gayle. When he came along, which was before T20, he was a skinny kid who batted pretty conventionally. To the point that he made two Test Match triple hundreds. Then T20 comes along, the IPL start giving out hugh sums of money. Gayle tells the story of being woken by a phone call, saying “you’ve gone for $600,000”, at the time he was getting $2000 for a one-day game!
So, he said, I changed my game, widened my stance, bulked up. This is where Gayle was a genius, he’s the one who realised that hitting the ball out of the ground would be what mattered. Who can hit the most 6’s will win the game. He turns himself into the guy that can do that, especially on the Indian grounds which are small. He also realises that it has this emasculating effect on bowlers.
As much as batters aren’t used to surrendering their wickets, bowlers aren’t used to having their length ball smashed out of the ground, it has a psychological effect on them. He reframes the whole psychology of cricket in a few years. He’s an amazing figure, deserves to be up there with Lara and Richards as a great of West Indian cricket, and world cricket. He was the one that realised what was needed, either instinctively or by sitting down and planning it. He was the one that changed things. He could say, I’ve proved I can do it in Test cricket, I can play that way. I’m not just a slogger.
It’s another way of thinking about the game. Is being able to hit the ball for 6, less of skill than being able to survive an opening spell on a difficult pitch? It’s a different skill but it’s still difficult to do, especially when the ball is coming down at you at 90mph.
Yes, very true. The other major change is of course that range of new shots that have into the game.
I remember doing a piece several years ago about the original Merlyn Bowling machine, it was invented by this guy in Wales. The machine can reproduce any bowler, Muralitharan, Warne anyone. England practised with it a lot. So I’ve tried playing “Warne”, it’s essentially impossible! I remember talking with Henry who invented the machine, and his son. They were saying, that someone needs to come up with a shot that takes the ball behind the wicket keeper, as that’s the only part of the field which isn’t protected. No sooner has that been said, Dilshan comes along and invents that shot!
Have you tried bringing these new shots into your game Jon?
No! I see idiots, including some that I play with trying to do it. You can’t do it. Our wickets are too slow, the bowling is too slow. If you scoop it, it’s not going to go anywhere. I don’t reverse sweep either. It’s too late for me!
Do you have a preferred form of the game?
As you can probably tell, I see something in every form of the game. I think it’s a really interest point in cricket history at the moment. In a hundred year’s time, they may be saying imagine being around when 20/20 cricket was invented, in the same way that people talk about the first Test matches now. Cricket is a sport like no other. Other sports would love to have a new way of playing it, which can attract a new crowd, but they haven’t got that. They are stuck with what they have. Cricket has proved to be endlessly adaptable. I like all sorts of cricket. Modern life has accelerated, people may not want to watch something for five days. Then again, the intrinsic value of the excitement of something that has gone on for five days and is still in the balance. You can’t replicate that over the course of a three hour game.
Is there anything about cricket that you would change?
There is one thing, one minor change I would make for Test cricket. It’s around taking the new ball. I think you should be able to take the new ball when ever you want. At the moment a ball lasts 80 overs, then the next one lasts 80 overs. I think that if, after 40 overs you think you could get an advantage by changing the ball, you should be able to take the new ball, that would have to be used until the 160 overs have been reached. I think that would add another tactical dimension. You might want to try to break a big partnership, maybe try to blast out the tail. It could fail but it would bring another dimension to test cricket.
A bit like playing your joker in It’s A knockout.
Yes, a bit like that. I think it could work quite well.
Agreed. Thank you for your time Jon. I hope have a great season this coming summer.
My next guest for a conversation about cricket, is the author Richard King. He has written beautifully about music and social history. Originally from South Wales, he studied in Bristol and worked in the legendary Revolver Records, sometimes even selling records to customers.
His book Original Rockers captures those splendidly uncommercial times with great tenderness. He was one of the co-founders of Planet Records, a label that was very important for the underground music scene in Bristol but also embraced bands from further afield such as Yo La Tengo.
His book The Lark Ascending used Vaughan Williams as a starting point for a narrative on the importance of the British landscape, its role in culture and politics. It’s a poetic and gently powerful read about the determination that is needed to retain access to our land.
His most recent book Brittle With Relics, is a brilliant oral history of the changes in Wales between 1962 and 1997. Essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the change in Wales in recent years.
Richard is often to be found at festivals, either talking or curating. Sadly this can somewhat curtail his cricketing exploits.
On a dramatically wet day, he kindly invited me to his home in Powys, for coffee, biscuits and chat about sunnier days.
Thanks for chatting with me Richard. What are your earliest cricketing memories?
I had an uncle who was a vicar, he played cricket. He was an umpire, he gave me his bat and his cap. I remember him teaching me how to hold the bat
What age would you been?
Four or five.
So how big was the bat?
Well practically up to my elbow. It was a very early Slazenger, willow bat. I still have it somewhere. He had a vicarage in Devon, which had quite a big lawn, I’d play there. I remember going to a village cricket match with him at Kilmington in Devon, getting a sense of the atmosphere of cricket. Then like many people in the summer holidays, I started watching it, erratically at first in the late 70’s when I was eight or nine. Then Botham’s Ashes (1981), I vividly remember watching the Headingly Test and the Old Trafford Test and just got completely hooked.
I remember Botham’s Headingly innings. I find people’s nostalgia for Top of the Pops incredibly tedious but the feeling that some people get from Legs & Co, I get from Ian Botham’s 149 not out.
What a lovely image!
Also, I have to say that I found Mike Brearley a really fascinating figure. Because he had grey hair and seemed so much older that the rest of them. He spoke so slowly. If you read “The Art of Captaincy”, he’s quite clear that he found the whole business of interviews and speaking about what was happening infantile.
It was interesting to see someone like him, who was so articulate and, in some way, quite a rarefied figure, especially when they toured, and he wore a scarf around his neck. But crucially, he didn’t come across as pompous, or a snob, or some sort of Gentleman player. He came across as an incredibly thoughtful person.
I think that one of the things Test matches do, and then did far more, as you could watch them for free for five days, is almost give you the chance to get to know people’s personalities. Especially the way that people would approach an innings in those days. Even their stance, Peter Willey’s for example which was so odd at the time. Someone like Derek Randall’s fidgetiness. You kind of got to know these people. I was just on the cusp of adolescence, watching this with friends. Then we all started playing cricket. We played together at school. Also. I was in the cathedral choir in Newport, where I grew up, and we had a team, for maybe three years.
What was your role in the team?
I remember opening in one match, hitting the first runs of the innings but not doing terribly well. But over time I became, sort of OK at Off Spin. Then in 2002 when, as an adult, I moved back to Wales, I joined the local club and ended up captaining The Seconds and also the Sunday team, took cricket quite seriously then.
Were you a Mike Brearley type skipper?
No, that approach wouldn’t have worked. I did though reread “The Art of Captaincy” before taking on the role.
Thinking of Ian Botham, someone with a very different personality, which Brearley got the best out of.
I really like the fact that when Botham was going through the hell of the captaincy, with the MCC members treating him with distain, he showed them what he thought of them. I liked that sort of push back against the deeper elements of the cricket establishment. I think in his own way, Brearley had that as well. He was certainly his own man, seemed a long way off from those Ted Dexter sort of figures.
Someone like Tony Lewis, as a Welshman, it pains me to say this, but he came across as someone who did the cricket establishments bidding.
Going back to Mike Brearley, it now seems odd that someone would get picked for the England side, primarily on his skill as a captain. I couldn’t see that happening these days.
Yes, he never made a century. I think it happened more in one-day cricket, Eoin Morgan at times maybe. I think that English cricket really appeared to be losing its way at the time, so they sent for someone who seemed to understand how to manage a team.
Are you too young to remember Tony Greig and the ridiculous bravado that he brought to the role of England captain?
I was a bit too young, but I know about his disgusting comments about getting the West Indies to grovel or beg, then he had to do it! I went to school in Oxford and had this incredible geography teacher called Jimmy Dewes and one lesson in late May or early June 1984 he said, “There’s no lesson today. What I consider to be probably the greatest cricket team of all time is playing in the parks in Oxford for free. I’m going there. If you want to go, I’m not taking you there, but if you want to go, then go”
And I went with three friends, the 1984 West Indies team were playing Oxford University. When we got there, we were looking around the field, saying, ‘I can’t see Viv, where’s Viv?’ Then realised that he’s keeping wicket and Jeffrey Dujon was bowling! I’ve never seen eleven more athletic looking people, or eleven more relaxed looking people. These cowering Oxford Blues were trying to get their body language together before going to the middle, to be beaten by these eleven relaxed guys. They were just so confident.
I treasure that memory of seeing them in The Parks, literally just walked into the park in Oxford and there was certainly one of the greatest sides of all time.
What a lovely teacher, hope he didn’t get into trouble.
No, no, it was very hard to get into trouble at that school.
Whilst I’ve been having these chats with people for this blog, It’s been interesting for me to discover, what I can only call, love for the West Indians teams from that era. It’s beyond parallel, I think.
Yes. I think so. Viv wearing the red, gold and green Rastafarian armband, there was a humanitarian quality to their touring. I loved the fact that when they played at The Oval, so many people who came from Brixton went to support them. To the degree that it wound up Norman Tebbit! I felt that, in a way, they took control of cricket, they reinvented how cricket got played. But they didn’t do it with sledging or being unpleasant. It was through such potency and skill, in every aspect of the game.
Gordon Greenidge scored those two double hundreds’, barely said a word the whole time, maybe raised his bat to acknowledge the crowd but there were no theatrics. Michael Holding’s bowling action, I just remember thinking, “How….?” The way Viv walked to the crease without a helmet, it was so heroic but at the same time it was the antithesis of the elitism around cricket. I loved it when there was a bunch of dudes at The Oval with conch shells making a racket, celebrating it. There was a sense of a dialogue between that team and the people who came to see them.
If you get into musical history, you can see that there is a similar energy with Sound Systems. A dialogue went back and forth.
I also loved watching Viv and Joel Garner playing for Somerset, and the way they bought the best out of Botham. Ian Botham today is a very complicated figure (laughing), to say the least. But I think that he did a lot for people of colour who played for England, people like Norman Cowans, he always made sure that these people felt supported. I think that part of Botham’s sense of being alienated from the elite, was influenced by hanging out with Joel Garner and Viv Richards, they must have had an influence.
Did you watch much County Cricket?
My first County game was Glamorgan at Sophia Gardens, probably in about 1982, we used to get in for free or maybe a £1 as we were under 16. I remember seeing Graham Dilley, so we (Glamorgan) must have been playing Kent. I remember going out to the square at lunch and seeing my first professional cricket square, and it looking unlike anything that I had ever played on. A different world, different geology. Seeing the footmarks and realising the pace that people must have been going at to leave those.
I went to see Glamorgan quite regularly. Then when I was at school, I’d go to The Parks. Then when I lived in Bristol, I’d quite regularly go to see Gloucestershire.
My first international match was when I was about ten, went to see a one-day match against Pakistan at The Oval. I think Alan Lamb scored quite a lot, Botham hit a 4, then immediately got out.
At Gloucestershire, I realised that if you went after tea, you got in for free. I lived, sort of Montpelier (suburb of Bristol) way, it was a really nice walk up to there. I remember going to see a couple of one day matches there, seeing Courtney Walsh batting and chasing and improbable score. He probably came in at number nine and came within one strike of winning, incredibly exciting to watch.
Gloucestershire felt like proper county cricket. Especially if you walked around the ground to The Jessop Tavern. If people wanted to caricature Bristolian behaviour, they had plenty of source material there. I found it an incredibly relaxing place, especially when you are in your twenties and a bit hyper.
Would you have gone on your own?
Went on my own a couple of times. Went with my then partner a couple of times. Took friends who were from Germany. They loved it. Would often just go with a couple of friends, I don’t remember the cricket being one thing or the other. It was just a really nice place to go and hang out.
One thing that I really liked, was that The County Ground felt very Bristolian, you’d hear Bristol accents. That added to the sense of relaxation. You were in a place which had been that way for a long time. The players they had like Bill Athey and Jack Russell, they didn’t look like super athletes, there was a sense that they were quite typical of Gloucestershire. Someone I was at school with, Tim Hancock played there and has been involved with the coaching side of things (Tim left the club in September 2022 after a long association with Gloucestershire). He got a Ton on his first innings for Gloucestershire. He always spoke very highly of the place.
It’s interesting that it’s where it is, by the standards of a lot of County grounds, it’s quite tucked away. Actually, quite typical of Bristol. Mainly Championship games that I would watch during that time. Then I had a bit of a gap, watched a couple of games at the end of the nineties. Then I went to the 2005 Ashes, the second day of the Lords Test. I try and go most years. I had a ticket for the Lords Test this year, but it didn’t work out, so I couldn’t make it.
Let’s talk a little about the impact of Wales on cricket.
I have a theory that the 05 Ashes result was all a product of Glamorgan and Welsh people being involved with the ECB. It was Wales, if not Newport that actually won the Ashes.
Pre Test status for Sophia Gardens, cricket in Wales always felt like a real underdog sport and that Wales wasn’t taken seriously. Even when they launched the 100, Welsh Fire’s strapline that the marketing people came up with was “Silencing The Haters”. So there’s an assumption that a Welsh team will be hated. Just look at the career of Mathew Maynard, he regularly had a very high batting average, I think for two seasons, he was the most successful batter. There was a fairly widespread assumption that he would have more of a test career if he’d played for a different county.
Wales’ relationship to cricket is very interesting. I don’t think that there was an issue within Wales, when it comes to Welsh players playing for England. With someone like Robert Croft he actually captained the Wales team that played friendly games, I think Wales did beat England once in a friendly (they did indeed in 2002 wining a 50 over game by 8 wickets), so he played for both teams. I think within Wales and Glamorgan, cricket was often associated with church and chapel. Also, my family were miners and they always played cricket, there were colliery teams. Sport was part of the cohesion of social life as well as being linked to the workplace.
David Morgan running the England and Wales Cricket Board was important. He was one of the best Chair’s of that organisation, the introduction of central contacts lead to that 05 Ashes victory. He deserves a lot of praise. He’s a very modest man, doesn’t give many interviews, fairly below the radar. The people who followed him were far more attention seeking.
Can you remember where you were when the 05 Ashes victory was clinched?
I was listening to it in The Pyrenees, on the radio that we’d borrowed from a bartender. It was amazing and I do think that it’s a tragedy that it was the last free to air televised series. I’m an ECB Level one coach and I coached after that summer, through the winter and there were so many people who wanted to bowl like Simon Jones, they loved the fact that he was Welsh and that he bowled fast.
The strength of talent and competition in that series was absolutely phenomenal. Also the respect was amazing, it wasn’t sledging and unpleasantness. That day at Trent Bridge when England won but Warne was ripping through England. I don’t even know if he was really turning the ball, but the way he was acting like a torturer, or hangman, it seemed like his force of personality was taking wickets. Flintoff against Ponting was a brilliant competition.
Although they don’t really get much credit, people like Ian bell and Paul Collingwood just held that middle order together, it wasn’t dramatic but they did do well. Also Trescothick and Strauss were such an amazing combination. It was so exciting from day one. I remember that in the 20-20 warm up, England beat Australia. At one point one of the Aussie’s started having a go at Collingwood, he really gave it straight back. You could almost see the Australians taking a step back. The trash talk didn’t take over after that, cricket was the focus. It was really good. I went to the Lords Test, it was probably the worst one from England’s perspective, apart from that first morning. But later Australia took their revenge.
The Sky takeover was part of the institutional takeover of cricket by people who work in finance. If you go to Lords and the Oval and see the hospitality boxes, it’s not a good sight. I’ve been at The Oval in a box myself and by 4pm you walk past a box and people are so drunk. It’s these H.R. people just going “that one’s going, yeah that one as well” just carelessly talking about laying people off after drinking all day. There was a capture of the game by the finance industry and people involved in those industries being appointed as board members and committee members.
The argument was that money could then be invested in grass roots but if people don’t know what cricket is, because they don’t encounter it at school or in the media or television, then why are they going to play?
Does your son play?
Yes, I coached All Stars the ECB initiative, at our club. He played from the age of eight.
But cricket’s gone down the route of Test Match Special interviewing people from bands you’ve never heard of, people called names like Felix. And you realise that only privately educated people had a chance from the 2010’s onwards. It had been completely hijacked by the elite. It may be getting slightly better now. It’s demonstrated by the way people talked about Jofra Archer and questioned his work rate. And to this day, some people within some parts of the cricket media seem to think that Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid are kind of utility bits and pieces, rather than the engine room. Adil Rashid won us that final.
Sadly, cricket has a real problem with class. It always has, but once the 2010’s came around it really seemed that only people who went to a certain type of school played for England, and they all batted in the same way. There was no character, you couldn’t really distinguish any of them. We spoke earlier about Randall, there was no longer any sense of a character like that coming through. Cricket has to admit the problem that it has to itself, regarding class, before progress can be made.
It also saddens me to see that at club level, there are specific leagues for different nationalities in some parts of the country.
The club that I used to play at in the Marches League, had a really nice ground, we hosted regional finals for Welsh Cups at under 16 level. The teams that used to win were often from places like Newport that had a high Asian population, they’d grown up learning to play with their families. The skills were incredible, all done at club level, nothing to do with their education. It’s mad that you then introduce soft segregation in England. Eoin Morgan was brilliant at addressing that, he was so good with Moen and Rashid.
Thinking about radio, was Test Match Special a big thing in your youth?
Yes, definitely. I remember rainy holidays in West Wales, having it on during the rain. Listening to Don Mosey just killing the hours when no play took place. I don’t know how my parents put up with it, must have been torture. I loved the pace at which they spoke, so reflective. I enjoyed that more than the comedic element.
I had the Observers book of Cricket and I listened to the 82/83 Ashes series in Australia and I wrote all the fielding places down, I remember listening to that at two in the morning. I’ve listened to it constantly ever since. When I worked in London, before I moved back here, I’d have it on quietly in the office. When I worked in Revolver, the record shop in Bristol, we’d often have the cricket on, instead of playing music. Roger (the owner) tolerated it, and he didn’t tolerate much!
I really loved Christopher Martin-Jenkins, especially he and Mike Selvey when they commentated together. They had a very soft lyricism, Christopher Martin-Jenkins was very good at capturing the atmosphere of cricket, especially gear shifts in the dynamism of a game. He did that really well. And Mike Selvey was so good on the technical side of things.
I do think that it got dumbed down when Adam Mountford became producer. I got very bored of Tufnell and other people being very laddish, cracking jokes that weren’t funny. All laughing at each other, It got very, very tedious. It has got better recently. There was a horrible sort of nadir around the 2015 Ashes series. They were talking about the Ashes and what it means but nobody was actually talking about the cricket that was happening in front of them.
How about cricket writers?
I love Gideon Haigh, incredible writer. He writes for The Australian, occasionally writes over her during an Ashes series. He written some brilliant books about cricket, I think he’s one of the best writers that cricket’s ever had..
I’ve got this (Richard pulls a lovely copy of Cricket all the Year by Neville Cardus) inscribed, “wishing you a Happy Birthday July 1963” that’s from my mother to my grandfather. So I sort of grew up with cricket.
Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James obviously. `The Art of Captaincy, as we discussed earlier. When I younger, I read all those Peter Tinniswood books, which probably haven’t aged terribly well with all those double entendres (which I didn’t understand at the time).
I think Mike Atherton’s pretty good. Also Jonathan Liew of The Guardian is excellent. Lots and lots of books have been written about cricket but sadly, I don’t think there are many great books. I think that probably Beyond a Boundary is the book about cricket.
Derek Pringle, when he wrote for The Telegraph, used to ring Revolver (the record shop Richard worked in, and wrote about in the excellent book Original Rockers) ahead of covering Gloucestershire games in Bristol. He’s a huge music fan and would buy really interesting records, a lot of reggae. He’d always spend a lot of money, which Roger (the boss) liked. He was a charming man and he really new his music. There is actually so much of a connection between Cricket and music, which hasn’t really been explored. Jazz in particular.
Have you ever watched a game overseas?
I’ve seen a game being played in France. Also saw a game being played in Brooklyn in Prospect Park, mainly by Jamaican guys.
I’ve never though been to see an international game. I must say that the Barmy Army, doesn’t feel attractive to me, especially with the heavy drinking culture.
Just going back to your playing history, when did you stop? Did nature tell you to stop?
When I lived in Bristol I played for the Highbury Vaults, when it was owned by Smiles Brewery, that was good. Then, I moved back here in 2001 and I really enjoyed playing a lot but, well basically, I became a parent. I try to play once a year. I played last season and for the very first time in my life, I pulled a hamstring. Nowadays summer Saturdays tend to be taken up with things like festivals for me.
We played in the Marches League, so it’s half in Wales, half in Herefordshire. You go to play in some amazing places, past farms, down lanes to places that you wouldn’t think existed anymore. I did find incredible, almost Zen levels of relaxation playing cricket in places like that.
It was good, proper competitive league cricket. The cliché is that people go and watch their children play football, and take it all out on the referee, or the kid if they play a bad pass. But because cricket can be static, I definitely encountered people who’d had a bad week, and it tended to be people who weren’t terribly good at anything. They liked standing there, trash talking.
We didn’t do it but if someone was being out of order, I’d always try to wind them up. Our strike bowler looked a bit like a chicken. From the age of five he’d been known as Cock. He was an incredible bowler. I’d stand at mid off. I remember this guy who was the opening bat for the other team. He’d been completely out of order, swearing and being really unneccesary. I said, let’s just ignore it and Cock will bowl him out. It got towards the end of the over, and the ball had been talking, this guy couldn’t get his bat on anything. The final ball went through, I just looked at him and clapped my hands loudly whilst shouting “That’s a great length cock!” And he really lost it, he was out not long after, he was ready to swing at someone, me probably.
You won the mind games, Mike Brearley would have been proud!
Yes, exactly! (laughing).
I’m going to run through some Glamorgan related names, just to see what thoughts they bring to mind for you.
Firstly Hugh Morris, both as player and chief exec.
Something of a folk hero, I think it was under Hugh that we won the championship in 1997. Absolutely a key person in the development of Sophia Gardens. A very popular man.
We touched on Viv Richards earlier.
Yes, only here for a few seasons but generated huge excitement. He’d played in the Lancashire Leagues and I think he felt very at home here. Like Somerset, I think he liked playing in the regions. People absolutely loved him at Glamorgan. He was so warm, I think his presence at Glamorgan just lifted everything.
Also, we touched on Matthew Maynard earlier.
Yes, I saw him bat. Like a lot of people who bat up the order, he seemed quite self-contained. Not very demonstrative. Apart from these guys like Geoffrey Boycott and maybe Michael Vaughan, with their classic Yorkshire free thinking of “why are England playing in Wales?”, most people fully accept Glamorgan. I think Maynard has had a great deal to do with that.
Robert Croft.
Yes, I saw him bowl. Quite a fast action for an Off Spinner, quite skiddie, actually no, more bitey. Really ebullient figure, slightly reminded me of Eddie Hemmings. I don’t mean to disrespect either of them but similar physiques. Very popular, had a brilliant test in that tour of the West Indies. What tends to happen is that every few years a Welsh person plays for England, they then become totemic. Simon Jones was another, such incredible technique with real pace. Vaughan was a very good captain for him. All the bowlers knew what their role was. Hoggard would do his bit, then it was well managed through the innings.
Javid Miandad
He was before my time, so I never saw him. People talked about his occupancy of the crease being extraordinary. Roy Fredricks was another overseas player. Back in the days when you could only have one, so they had a lot of responsibility.
Going back to that point I made earlier, about people revealing their characters when playing. That was true for Counties as well, when I was younger. Nottinghamshire felt really tough and played with great fluidity, a different temperament.
Yes, Lancashire were the ones for me, when I was young, Seemed very exciting.
Whilst Yorkshire were very tedious (laughs).
Somerset had that slight sort of swashbuckling irreverence, with Botham, Garner and Richards but also with Vic Marks due to his action and appearance. They seemed to be full of characters. Also the County Ground at Taunton is quite small, so if people had been packed in, and had a few ciders, it would be quite rocking. The success of Somerset cricket is far greater than any local football teams, so there is an awareness of cricket due to that success that may not happen in many parts of the country. When Somerset games were televised, you really got sense of the link between the fans and the team. The travelling support at Lords always brought a special atmosphere.
You mentioned the test match at Lords last season. Any thoughts on the pricing of Test’s there?
It’s insane. For my sins I’m on the waiting list for the MCC, so for all my waspish commentary about the cricketing elite, I’m in the queue. You get a slight discount and choice of the cheaper seats. But the price of cricket is a huge issue. People will buy tickets for T20 because they know what they are getting. There is also some extraneous entertainment, so they may feel they are getting more of a memorable experience for their money. Even if their side doesn’t win. They will have seen more wickets and more big hits.
So really, especially in London at The Oval and Lords, the pricing is a function of the Test match being a social/work networking event. It’s like the loss of the TV rights. It’s just part of cricket being captured by the financial-political complex. Something doesn’t feel quite right when you see pictures of Nigel Farage at Lords. He‘s perfectly welcome to go there but the fact that it’s treated as a bit of fun bothers me.
The same applies to rugby. Particularly, sadly, to rugby in Wales. Whilst in football, you can go and watch the Welsh Euro qualifying games next year, getting four tickets for £104. To go and see Wales play Ireland at rugby in the six nations, the cheapest ticket is £105, that’s for one game. The crisis of the British political economy affects sport.
Thanks Richard, those were all the questions I had. Is there anything else cricket related that we haven’t covered?
Just that I do think that Test cricket at its best, when you do have the rhythm of the five day game, and you have quietly invested your time over that period. If the game lasts until the last day, and you still don’t know what the outcome will be. I do think it’s one of the most satisfying, rewarding experiences. A Test match which has the quality of chess is, apart from Yoga and the Greatful Dead, as close as you can get to a spiritual experience. It’s very nourishing.
For years, friends in the USA or France have asked me “What’s cricket?” and I say. “Well it takes five days but they do stop for lunch AND tea, and the rest of it is a bit like human chess. But I do think that Test cricket is only as good as the captaincy of the teams. Vaughan was a brilliant captain. Joe Root is a phenomenal batter but just not a very good captain. It’s interesting with him, someone who has been playing semi professional cricket since they weren’t far off single digits in terms of age. Yet, that doesn’t teach you captaincy.
I think that Stokes just has that strength of character, and whatever you think of Bazball, Stokes just has a cricket brain. You do need that cricket brain, it can’t be coached. He has it. Australian cricketers often have it. Because they were so dominant for so long, someone like Ponting’s captaincy skills were underrated. Virat Kohli, by his own admission lost it a bit but I think he had a brilliant cricket brain. Along with the narrower calibre of people allowed to play cricket, in terms of their socioeconomic backgrounds, we seem to really struggle in Test matches, to find people with that cricket brain to captain. Eoin Morgan was somebody who really has a spectacular cricket brain. I would have loved to have seen him captain the Test side. Brilliant at field placings, he must have been so fit mentally, as every ball, he had a plan.
The cricket academy, elite sport structure channelling peoples natural talent into incremental gains in things like batting set-up or being a few miles an hour faster with the bowling action. You can absolutely see why people would want to produce those tiny improvements. But basically, neither Cook nor Root were very good captains and Test cricket really suffered as a consequence. Strauss had his moments.
The other thing, is that in my lifetime it just feels harder for teams to win away from home in test cricket. Also there is too much cricket, across too many formats and something has to give.
But it’s still the best game. Mainly because it’s got little to do with the actual playing of the sport. When you are playing cricket, if you are in the field, you really feel that you have the psychological upper hand. Because there’s more of you. But once the batter does get going, it flips so quickly. You really feel like you are chasing the game, even though there are more of you. Those subtle shifts in dynamics, when you watch, or listen to someone compiling and innings, and you feel them going up through the gears. You don’t really get that in other sports.
It’s a team sport, played by individuals.
Thank you for your time and your thoughts Richard. Hope you get some game time next season.
My next guest for a cricket chat is the journalist and author Jonathan Wilson. In addition he is the founder and editor of The Blizzard a quarterly football magazine, indeed the majority of his writing is about football. You can find his match reports the The Guardian and features in The Observer
He writes with the wonderful combination of razor sharp attention to detail and a huge desire to uncover the soul and passion behind the stories. From the classic English language book on football tactics with “Inverting the Pyramid” to incredible studies of the culture and social history that shaped football and indeed life in Hungary, Argentina, and Eastern Europe. He actually has 11 books under his belt, I would love to know what formation he lines them in?
He has also written about cricket as well as playing the game at club level in Essex and for the Authors XI. His long form piece about parents, loss, memory and lance Gibbs for The Nightwatchman it both searingly honest and beautifully tender.
I spoke with Jonathan a few days before he was set to head off to cover the Football World Cup. which was due to take place in the sort of heat, that he would have fancied for a decent batting track in Essex.
Thank you for joining me today for a chat. What are your earliest cricketing memories?
I think it was, I know everyone says this, but it probably was the 81 Ashes series. I remember wanting to go and play cricket in the garden but my parents and grandparents were very reluctant as they wanted to watch the cricket on TV, I think it would have been the Old Trafford Test.
The first game I really remember watching would be the following summer, the Lord’s test against Pakistan when, if you remember England lost a load of wickets chasing quite a low total. Mudassar Nazar ran through the England top order with his dibbley dobbley swing quite suddenly. They ended up with Ian Botham and Vic Marks at the crease, they went off for bad light and came back the next morning needing, maybe forty something to win. They actually knocked off the runs pretty easily. I remember being incredibly tense that morning, not really understanding that batting in poor light, with the elements against you, is totally different to batting in brilliant sunshine the next day.
Then one of the great things about this job is that Vic Marks became a colleague, and I remember one Christmas lunch sitting with him and a bottle of red wine and telling him that was my earliest cricket memory.
Excellent, and as all bowlers do, I expect he enjoyed talking about his batting!
Yes.
Did you play cricket as a child?
I played in the garden and played obsessively in the garage, throwing the ball for myself. Which is still why the only shot I can play is the cut. If I played the ball off my legs, it was going to hit the tumble drier. That was bad news, not just because it left marks but it would make this terrible resonant bang, that my mam would hear!
In my junior school we had two or three games, then it was the time of the teachers strikes and so all extracurricular stuff stopped. I blame that for the end of my chess career as well!My senior school was attached to a different junior school. They took cricket very seriously, so suddenly it was a totally different level, but they weren’t particularly interested in helping people who had enthusiasm but hadn’t previously had any coaching.
I Played at university and really enjoyed that, playing sort of second team, wasn’t the highest standard, playing around Oxfordshire villages which was lovely. I then basically had given it up.
There is a mate of mine who is the grandson of Lord Denning, there used to be an annual game of Lord Denning’s XI V. Whitchurch (the village he lived in), so I was invited to play in that for three or four years. Basically, that was the only cricket I was playing.Then in 2012, I was at The Oval for the test against South Africa, when Graham Smith (131) and Hashim Amla (311) batted for weeks! I was working with Matt Thacker and he introduced me to Charlie Campbell and Tom Holland who had resurrected The Authors XI Cricket Team, and they persuaded me to come and play for them.
Having not played for a while, was there some trepidation about that?
Yes, because I hadn’t played for years. I actually made 39 in my first innings, which I think is still my highest Authors score. I came in at 16-4 and put on a hundred with Jon Hotten. Of that 39, I think there were two pulls for 4, every other scoring shot was a dab behind square on the off side!
They didn’t stick an extra fielder down there?
Well my dabs very good, I can direct it!One of the great things about getting to your late thirties is that you may have a bit of money. So, I was able to pay for coaching. I’m coached now, and it’s great. I at least know how to drive, even if I can’t actually do it. In March/April time I’ll go and have a two-hour session every week with a coach and it’s made me a much better player.
Then once you start playing, you hear about other teams being short of players, so you go and play for them. There was a spell when I played for four different teams. I now play league cricket in Essex. Marcus Berkmann has a team called The Rain Men, he’s written a couple of books about playing terrible amateur cricket, he got in touch through Charlie Campbell. I went and played with them.
Then I was playing in a game for them at Hutton Cricket Club in Essex, I played in a charity a Fenners previously with one of the Hutton players and after the game, he asked me if I was free next Saturday. I was, so that’s how I got involved with league cricket. They are now my most regular team, that’s the 5ths, so it’s not a great standard. Takes me about ninety minutes to get there, which is a time to sit and read, or listen to a podcast as I don’t do any work commute.
How was your form last season?
I got my first ever century!
Yeah, to be honest that had been the thing that had kept me going. After I started to have batting coaching, suddenly it clicked. I’d scored 77 not out, we lost by 1 wicket, we were chasing 160, we were 156-6 and we lost 4-0! I was stranded up the other end on 77 not out against decent bowlers. That’s the best innings I’ve ever played.
The following week, I got 74 in the league, and I thought I’d cracked it, batting’s dead easy.That was five or six years ago and I’ve struggled on from then. But the thing that kept me going was the thought that, on a good day, I think I could do this.
Even getting my first half century was a big moment, that was out at Reach Cricket Club in Cambridgeshire on a terrible pitch, literally electricity pylons going across the ground. The least glamorous place.
For the century though, we were bottom of the league, struggled with availability last summer both for me and the team. I think I only played five league games due to various things. It was very odd, we were bottom, hadn’t won a game all season, playing the team who were second in the league. It was at home, our pitch is a good one, the strip is on the top of a hill, so you get full value for your shots.
It was my 46th birthday and on the way, I thought to myself. Wouldn’t a birthday ton be a great thing. We’d bowled really well, bowling them out for 180 odd. I opened, the captain took the first ball, that over was a maiden. There was quite a decent LBW shout against me first ball, one of those where you look around and think, Oh no…The next ball was a full toss, which I absolutely creamed through the covers for 4.
From then on, I couldn’t miss. Every time they dropped short it was four runs, every time they over pitched, four runs thank you very much. As a Sunderland (Football Club) fan, what was really appropriate was that the 50 came off 37 balls, we won the cup in 1937.Then the hundred came off 73 balls, the other time we won the cup was 1973. So, yes 117 not out off 80 odd balls and we won by 10 wickets.
Now it must be said that although they were second in the league, it was Eid and I think that hit their pool of players, but hey, that’s not my fault!I ended up averaging 40 odd with the bat in the league and maybe 14.8 with the ball, which makes it look like an extraordinary season, but I have to say that apart from that day, I didn’t really feel in good nick at any point.
How did you feel after finally making a Ton?
Totally drained. You know those times when you know you aren’t feeling the emotion because your body won’t let you do so. Then I got home, and my Mrs said, “what would you have said to your Mam?” (she died three years ago) And I completely broke down. Somehow cricket and my Mam were tied up together, it was such an emotional thing. I was very aware, when I scored it, that my body was saying – Don’t react to this.
Hutton is a great club, and what is really lovely is the spirit there. We can put out five teams which is great, the Women’s section of the club is absolutely thriving, they are very good at bring kids through and also, all the teams mix together.There is no sense that the first’s are up on a pedestal, separate to the rest.
I got back to the clubhouse and the number of people who congratulated me, or gave me a hug, it was a lovely feeling. You knew that they actually cared about me, it was lovely to feel part of this bigger thing.
It was a great day, the thirds were involved in a really tight game. When we got there, the opposition needed around 25 to win with 2 wickets in hand. With about 8 runs needed our captain took a brilliant catch at Short Extra. Then we won it by 1 run, thanks to the stupidest run out. The other team had brought along a group of fans as well, we were all watching and you thought, this is what it should be. Fifty or sixty people standing on the boundary with a pint, them cheering their runs, us cheering our wickets. It was just a perfect situation.
(Picture below is of Jonathan in the post century glow)
Going back to you really getting involved with cricket, were there any players that you were particularly drawn to when you were younger?
Well, I was a big fan of John Embury (I didn’t understand rebel tours and apartheid, so I feel quite uncomfortable now looking back at it), I am a slow off spinner, I was a bowler rather than a batsmen. Then I had problems with my shoulder, so I reinvented myself as an opening batsmen. Embury was probably my big mid eighties hero.
Then Graham Gooch around the turn of the Nineties. I was very much on his side in the Gooch/Gower spat – “Work harder, don’t be a fancy dan who has all the time in the world. Work!” Although I have slightly softened on that stance now.
Growing up in the North East, Durham weren’t part of the first class set up. Did you go anywhere to watch first class cricket?
Yes, Durham didn’t join until 1992, so there were two things that I did. We used to go to Jesmond in Newcastle to Northumberland’s homeground, which oddly has been taken over by my old school. A travel agent used to put on two exhibition one day games there every summer.
It started as Durham and Northumberland V. The Rest of The World, which was very much how life felt in the early 80’s! Then it became England V. The Rest of The World. That was great, really big name players like Derek Randall, a very young Nasser Hussain, Clive Rice, Carl Rackemann, Terry Alderman, Martin Crowe, Farokh Engineer, it was very friendly and it was easy to get autographs.
So that was my first experience of watching those sorts of players, I was probably 7 or 8 years old, when I first went, and we went every year for 4 or 5 years. Occasionally Yorkshire would play a John Player League game in Middlesbrough, so we went to a few games there. I remember seeing Martyn Moxon hit three 6’s against Kent. Then when Durham became a first class county. I’d go with my mates to Darlington particularly as Feethams was easy to get to.
The Jesmond ground is very close to Gosforth and the South Northumberland ground, Durham have started playing some games there. They played a Royal London game there. Now I love “Out Ground” Cricket but even by the standards of that it was pretty out there. I went with a mate who thankfully lived ten minutes from the ground, we got to the ground and were told that we were meant to bring our own chairs! That hadn’t been mentioned anywhere. So we decided that I would get a space, whilst they nipped home to pick up a couple of chairs. They have even played a championship game there this summer.
It must have been very exciting when Durham broke the old order of 17 first class counties.
Yes, but the problem was that we were rubbish for a long time! Obviously, we had Botham and Simon Brown, so you would hope that they could prepare a pitch that would allow Brown to take 8-30 and we might have a chance.
In 2007 I’d been covering England v. West Indies at Chester le-Street, it was a great thing to see test cricket there. The day after that, Durham were playing Essex in the semi-final of Friends Provident Trophy, I’d been covering the Test for the FT and they said I could stay up for the Durham match. Durham bowled Essex out for around 70 and then were 30-odd for 6 when Liam Plunkett hit a massive 6 and the pressure was off. I feel very lucky to have seen Durham win that semi-final.
They played Hampshire in the final, just prior to that Ottis Gibson had taken a 10fer against Hampshire in the championship. In the press conference before the final, Shane Warne who was the Hampshire captain, was asked if they had any special plans to deal with Gibson, “Have you worked out how to play him yet?” He replied that it had been a freak, it wouldn’t happen again, Two balls in they were 0-2.
Since then, it’s been a bit of a financial rollercoaster!
Well, they’ve been absolutely stiffed by the ECB, haven’t they? No two ways about it. They have been treated completely differently to Hampshire.
They overextended by building Chester-le-Street, it’s a lovely ground, the facilities are great, the view up to Lumley Castle is great. Chester-Le-Street, with the best will in the world’s a very hard place to get to. Even from Sunderland right, so it’s just not in a good place, you are never going to get big T20 crowds that you get even in somewhere like Chelmsford. It’s just really hard to get to.
Did they make a mistake with the location of the ground? It’s difficult, Newcastle is not actually in Durham, it’s in Northumberland. If you put it there, people from Sunderland won’t go. If you put in Sunderland people from Newcastle won’t go. Could they have put it in Gateshead because they did play there initially? I don’t know but Chester-le-Street is not a convenient place. It’s why The Northern Super Chargers team for the 100 are based in Leeds, which is a hundred miles away.
You see people like Kevin Pietersen saying you need to concentrate the talent, but County Cricket’s not just about that. It’s also about development. Look at the players Durham have developed in the last thirty years. Where would English cricket be without Mark Wood. Steve Harmison, Ben Stokes, Paul Collingwood and slightly more minor figures like Borthwick, Stoneman and Keaton Jennings.
It’s a wider problem in sport for the North East generally. The Women’s Super League in football is another example. For the last World Cup the England team, a third of the squad came from the Sunderland academy, yet where is the nearest Super League franchise to Sunderland? It’s in Manchester! If you’re a lass growing up in the North East, where do you play your football? Where do you go and watch your football?
Do you still regard Durham as “your team” even though you moved away a while ago?
Yes, absolutely.
Do you get much of a chance to watch them?
Last Summer, for one reason and another I didn’t. I much prefer going to County Cricket rather than Test Cricket.
I had a bit of a revelation at The Oval in 2013, the test where Shane Watson smashed Simon Kerrigan all over the ground. I paid £100 or so for the ticket, I was square on to the wicket, so although I could see Simon Kerrigan’s full tosses pretty clearly, I couldn’t see much else. It was baking hot, there was no cover, no leg room, everyone was absolutely leathered and I just thought, I’m not really enjoying this. Why have I paid a hundred quid for this? So I thought that from now on, I’ll watch my international cricket on the telly and I’ll go to County cricket.
Scarborough, I try to get to every year, go for two days. That’s a great day out, it a Yorkshire-On-Fete! The conversations around you are great.I remember Yorkshire against Worcestershire, Yorkshire were getting battered, it was a little bit gloomy, a tiny bit of drizzle in the air. Around us there was this group of around a dozen seventy-year-olds, Neil Mallender was the umpire. For about an hour, as the drizzle got slightly heavier, they were shouting: “Get ‘em off Mallender!” “Get ‘em off it’s a disgrace Mallender!” “I can’t see me hand in front of me face!”
When they come off. The umpires walk round in front of the stand. This one bloke, must have been well into his seventies start shouting “MALLENDER! MALLENDER!” Mallender looks up. The guy shouts again. “Your 5fer at Headingley 1992. Cheapest Test 5fer in history. You’re a disgrace!”It was the most precision heckle and had some truth as the wicket had been specifically produced to help average county medium pacers. Brilliant.
Any other grounds that you love to visit?
I love Scarborough. Completely different vibe but Arundel is also great. Worcester is incredibly beautiful. I like The Oval, it’s my nearest ground, nice and easy to pop along to. The Blizzard, the football magazine that I run, has an office there. For County games, I can just go along and pop out on the balcony. I love out-grounds, been to Radlett a couple of years ago, also Beckenham. I hope to do a couple of out-grounds a year.
When it comes to watching, is it a social or solitary thing for you?
I wouldn’t go on my own, it would be one mate upwards. That’s the beautiful thing about an out-ground. You trot along with your picnic hamper, you can have bread a nice cheese, some charcuterie and a couple of good bottles of wine. It all very relaxed and civilised, you don’t have stewards searching through everything.
There was a game at Chelmsford, when I’d taken quite a nice bottle of champagne and the steward said, “You can’t take in a glass bottle.”, I said, “No, it’s champagne, champagne comes in plastic bottles.” “Really?” “Yes.” “Ok, in you go.”
Are you a big listener to Test Match Special or would you always be watching?
Yes, absolutely, a big listener. Often, I’m working with the telly on but the sound off. I very much enjoy TMS, Dan Norcross is a mate, I’m delighted that he’s got his break on there, he’s just a great raconteur. Remember playing computer games with it on in the background, the voices of Brian Johnstone and Jonathan Agnew.
I also think that the Sky team at the moment is amazing. I think that It’s the highest level of coverage (in any sport that I know about). Ian Ward is great as a presenter, then Nasser, Mike Atherton and Rob Key when he was doing it, they just get that perfect balance of technical expertise and taking the micky out of each other. They are amusing to listen to, but also informative. That’s what all broadcasting should aspire to.
Cricket is still blessed with ease of access at all levels. Nasser is connected to Hutton, so people mix across all levels. I’ll give you an example of the difference between football and cricket. Back in 2003, when Sussex won the championship for the first time. It was their penultimate game of the season, away at Lancashire. I’d been covering the day’s play and thought it would be nice to talk to Peter Moores (Sussex Coach). So I asked the Sussex press officer if there would be any chance of talking to him? “Oh yes. Just go and knock on the door” “What, I’m not naive, I’m just going to look an idiot if I do that.” “No, go on, just go and knock on the door.” That just wouldn’t happen in football.
Just going back to your playing career. I’m interested to hear about your bowling as well, especially after reading the description on the Authors CC website.
Well, when I first started bowling for the Authors CC, I hadn’t bowled for ages, so I was quite slow and quite loopy. I have speeded up a bit. I’m not an orthodox bowler in any sense. I bowl non turning off breaks but with quite a lot of overspin, so it skids on.
I had an operation on my shoulder in June three years ago, which it took quite a long time to get over. Injured myself chasing a ball downhill to the boundary, didn’t realise how serious it was and kept bowling for a year and a half.
If you compared my record on a Saturday to a Sunday, you could tell there was something badly wrong, but I kept going. My Saturday stats didn’t really change but the Sunday ones were atrocious. I was bowling loads of full tosses. After the surgery, I’ve developed this little away swinger, which is how I get my wickets. But I can’t bowl more than four or fiveovers without a break.
The week after I got my century, we were really short of bowlers and I ended up bowling ten overs, took 4-33. So, I got my best batting and bowling figures in the league in successive weeks! But at the end of that spell, it felt like my arm was dropping off. The last two or three balls, I could barely get it to the other end. It kind of messed me up for the rest of the season.
So, maybe something of a later period David Gower with regard to throwing the ball in whilst fielding?
I’ve never been able to throw. What I think I am good at though, is dummying to throw. Also I’m good at those sliding stops, when you go down on one knee, going past the ball, grab, stand and shape to throw, They often think you will have a good arm and don’t chance it. The key is to never, never, ever throw it!
Tactics are a specialist subject of yours in your football writing. What do you think about the approach to tactics, especially in red ball cricket over recent years?
Well, my sense is that it’s weirdly lapsed. I guess that’s a money thing. If you are a data analyst, and data is clearly the way things are going now, both in football and cricket.
The money in cricket is in T20 and franchise formats. The idea of “match ups” can be slightly over played at times but I find it fascinating. I talked to Ben Jones for a piece I was doing on football, it struck me that so much of the data was context specific. It could be that a ball pitching in a certain place, takes a wicket, against this sort of batsmen, every so many balls. But if you bowl that ball, every ball, it will cease to be so effective because batters will adjust to it.
Ben was very interesting on this. Saying that he, as an analyst was very aware of that and thinks that data analysis can only work in conjunction with video analysis. That’s where football analysis, which I know much more about, is lagging, due to lack of understanding of context.
A simple example of that will be, a coach at a premier league team, who I know fairly well, they were playing another premier league team. Their main centre back was injured, the replacement was an older player who was slow on the turn. The data analyst said that you have to push high against this side.
The coach was saying, we will be slow on the turn, their forwards are quite quick, this doesn’t feel right. At half-time they are 3-0 down. In the second half, they come back into a bit the xG (expected goals) end up being even and the data analyst, says, “see, we got it right.” The coach says, “no, we only got back into it because we were 3-0 down and they were sitting back, absorbing pressure. They didn’t need to do anything else, because we had conceded the first three goals of the game in half an hour”. So you have to know what the data means. The two sets of information have to work together, that’s true in cricket and football.
I think there is a drip down from 20 and 50 over cricket, to test cricket. With regard to match ups, the amount of variation that you can get in test cricket is so vast compared to white ball games, so it’s harder to pin those down. The deterioration of a pitch over five days, is totally different to just playing 40 overs. Conditions make such a difference. The state of the game makes such a difference.
Whilst I’m still very pro data, as we can learn a lot from it, so we shouldn’t dismiss it as some sort of cabalistic gobbledygook. I still hope that there is a place in the game, for a captain having a feeling of, this bloke, who hasn’t bowled for three months – this is his day. I hope there is still a place for those inspired guesses.
There was a very good piece in The Atlantic recently about the “moneyballisation” of everything. It talked specifically about film, I thought it was an age thing that I hardly go to the cinema anymore, twenty years ago, I would go every week, now I never go. Then you look at say, Marvel films, which I have no interest in. They work for the studios because there is a guaranteed profit, a certain number of people like them. So the studios have “moneyballed” the system, so this is not a great auteur producing “art”. It’s “product”, that is efficient in making money and bringing a certain number of people into cinemas.
I really hope that football and cricket, don’t go the same way, where it just becomes a formula that gets applied. I wrote a piece recently on football, saying that at the moment it’s the most dominant cultural mode that there has ever been.
Never before, have so many people, in so many countries been so invested in this one thing. So, it seems unassailable, but what would it take to challenge that? All things have their time. Chariot Racing was in this position two thousand years ago, nobody watches Chariot Racing now! Cricket had a dominant position in the 1930’s, now it’s, in some ways, struggling.
What would it take for football to go that way? I was talking in relation to Qatar and the World Cup, the corruption, the sense of disgust and distaste around this World Cup. Could it be the thing that affects the popularity of future World Cup’s?
Also there are a few other issues with football. The Super League which collapsed before it got off the ground last year, they have taken legal action against UEFA, accusing them of taking a monopoly position. If they win that, and football goes like boxing and has multiple hierarchies, which cricket has sort of done with the franchise formats, does that mean the best never play the best as happens in boxing? What if Manchester United never play Real Madrid? That would affect the popularity.
There is also an issue with youth becoming detached from the sport because of cost factors. I also wonder if “data” may just turn the game into a formula. What if everyone plays the same way, because the data says that’s the best way to play?Cricket and football are games of such variety, even at the level I play. What if it loses that. If they lose the capacity for individual genius or for a coach to come up with his own theories? Those narratives of geniuses, whether playing or coaching are what drive the sport. Not the guy who says that “if you bowl two and a half feet outside off stump this ball, then next ball you bowl an outswinger on leg stump, you’ll win”.
I heard you talk passionately about the importance that teams play in their communities, especially when everything else has gone. Is that something that could be lost, is that something that concerns you?
Yes, that’s the issue with franchises. I get that franchise cricket might make the level of cricket better. But is that the only thing we are interested in?
I’m not sure that Counties quite represent their communities in the way that football clubs do. But they do so, to an extent.Certainly, the fact the cricket goes to Scarborough once a year, goes out in the community, that’s a good thing. Access to facilities and top-class sport is important. It shouldn’t just be for the people who live in the big cities.
It’s about striking a balance between excellence in the level of sport and also making it available to all. Creating something that brings the community in, may not always pay the bill in the short term but in the long term it creates good will and a community of fans, who are in a low key way, activists for the club.
It’s interesting that the perspective of someone like Kevin Pietersen is very different, he left his home to go and play cricket in a different hemisphere. So, I get why he’s less concerned with those ties to community and why the franchise model makes more sense to him.
Have you watched cricket overseas?
I went to Galle, two friends got married there in 2012. It was meant to be the day after the test finished but it was two days after, because Herath ran through us on the 4th afternoon!
That was great, we sat up on the fort for two days, we were in the ground for two days. On the first or maybe the second day, we were in the bar in a hotel and we saw Kumar Sangakhara, who was playing. One of us went over and said that we were there for a friend’s wedding, was there any chance that he could get hold of a publicity poster for the game and sign it for them?
He said I’ll get both teams to sign it and drop it off at the hotel tomorrow.” And he did, what a wedding present to have. If it was just his signature we would have been very happy. What a lovely man. We were talking about commentators earlier, he’s a great one as well. He has a level of insight, intelligence and expertise all delivered in a way that’s never off putting and is very engaging.
Oh, and South Africa as well. I was at the Football African Cup of Nations in 2013, I don’t drive which has never been a problem except for South Africa where the public transport is so bad. I was with Mark Gleeson the doyen of South African football writers when it was announced that the tournament was being moved there. He said to me that he would drive me everywhere, but you have to understand that you will need to get up early every morning.
It was the most brutal tourism I’ve ever done. He’d get us up at 4AM to go on a Game Drive. They were amazing but I was saying to him, “I’m trying to work here, on 4 hours sleep. Brilliant, there are some Rhinos but…” One day he took us to The Wanderers in Johannesburg for the last day of South Africa – Pakistan, I think it was over before lunch. Mark blagged us into the press box, we were journalists working on sport. Just not that sport. I witnessed something even rarer than seeing four rhinos, which is apparently quite rare. But even rarer, I was in the lift when Kepler Wessels cracked a joke! It was in Afrikaans so I didn’t understand it but Shaun Pollock laughed, so it must have been quite a good joke.
What cricketers have given you the most pleasure over the years?
It’s Ben Stokes. Has to be Ben Stokes. Especially as he’s a Durham player, with all the difficulties that he’s had. His capacity to always be there, doing the right thing at absolutely the key moment of the game.
The Authors CC have a WhatsApp group, at the beginning of the World Cup, there was a lot of “Oh why is Stokes in the team? What Does he actually bring?” I was saying, well he bats and bowls and he’s Ben Stokes! There will be a moment when we need someone to be Ben Stokes and there is nobody better at Ben Stokes than, Ben Stokes.
There was a piece in The Guardian by Taha Hashim that was published on the 5th October, the final paragraph is: “The value of Stokes may not come on a batting paradise, but a sticky one, when brains begin to fry and someone just needs to stick it out in a chase of 140.” Well, Yes!
When he got that very quick double ton in South Africa, it was amazing to watch but the fear was that he would try to do that every game. And, for a little time he did. But what was brilliant about the innings at Headingley was that he was only on 3 after 73 balls, he just worked it out. Even the 2019 World Cup final, the way he paced that chase, when he talks about the final ball. That he decided not to try to hit it for 4, just to push it to the gap, to guarantee getting the single, to be that smart and have the awareness to manage the situation.
When it comes to the post-match interviews, when you compare his attitude to, say Botham’s at Headingly in 1981 and Botham’s hostility to the press. Stokes is very humble and lucid. I think he comes across incredibly well.
If there is one thing you could change about Cricket, what would it be?
Oh God, well we wouldn’t have the 100.
We’d have a sensible integrated calendar, where you’d have a proper County Championship season. Probably only seven test matches, financially obviously that won’t work, ideally the crowds will flock back to the County Championship games though. I’d like two tests against a smaller nation, maybe even an associate nation and then a proper series of five tests.
Also work out some sort of Test Championship without all the nonsense coefficients. Maybe having the four playing a semi-final and a final. I realise the calendar is packed and it would be difficult.
I do quite enjoy the IPL now despite myself, the problem is the time it takes. I do like the idea of the best in the world playing against each other. One of the knock-on effects of the IPL, which I think has been incredibly positive, is that when you watch international games now, the players all know each other. There is far less ill feeling, because they have been sharing drinks together in Bangalore or wherever. There seems to be much more mutual respect and friendship.
So, sort out the calendar, so we have: Test Cricket, County Championship, Fifty Overs, T20, no 100. Also have exactly the same for Women’s cricket.
So rather than constantly chasing this entirely illusory audience of young people who demand that everything is in neon, and you have a song after every ball or whatever. Maybe just appreciate the middle aged and old have their place, we want to sit and watch a gentle game, drinking nice wine and eating good cheese.
We also pay money, so don’t ostracise us, maybe you created this glitzy T20 competition that straddled the mythical youth market and us. Maybe that’s the way to do it. Rather than turning to Cricket’s traditional fanbase and saying “We don’t care about you now, we’re going for the youth/city audience and the players have got be dressed as crisp packets”
Next up for a chat with me, is Bristol journalist and documentary maker, Neil Maggs. Neil is a passionate voice in the Bristol media. He crops up in a variety of places, often taking a look at things from a different perspective to many journalists. He cares deeply about the city and the people who live in it.
Cricket has always played a big part in his life, so it was good to catch up with him for a zoom chat recently. As you will read, he has also worked in sport development and youth work around the city. Looking to engage with youngsters who may sometimes miss out on the opportunities that others take for granted. A big football fan as well, now that his playing days are over in both sports, you are likely to catch him watching Bristol Rovers or Gloucestershire. No V.I.P. lounges for him though, he will be happily watching with average fan. I say happily, I guess that depends on the performances of the respective clubs.
He is a regular contributor to community owned newspaper The Bristol Cable. His podcast series Bristol Unpacked for the paper is always a fascinating listen. He loves holding those in power to account, asking the questions that often are avoided by other media outlets. He has also written for The Telegraph about Rugby star Ellis Genge, a working class lad competing in a sport that can be seen as being elitist. Perfect territory for Neil.
He has also been at the forefront of some excellent shows on BBC Radio 4, on the subjects of race and class. Happy to challenge orthodox thinking, whilst digging to the heart of matters that can limit the life chances of some in our city. His works raises questions, that don’t always have easy answers.
It was nice to interview a man who is normally on the side of the questioning.
Thanks for finding the time to have this chat with me Neil. Looking way back, what were your first memories of cricket?
The first memories of any cricket whatsoever, it would have been the West Indies touring team when I was about four or five in 1980. My dad was a massive cricket fan, and he was self-employed and also have had this whole thing about, you need to work hard, and you need to be really driven in everything you do. Yet every time there was a Test Match it somehow managed to coincided with him literally doing nothing for five days other than watching cricket on quite a regular basis. And I just remember thinking, this is so boring, what is he watching this for. Oh god he’s watching this again!
Then I remember distinctly England were batting and I didn’t know anything about cricket, then it was similar to when I watched the football World Cup in 1982, when Brazil played. it was like, bloody hell this is not what I’m used to! It was the cheering, the shouting, the crowd. The big West Indian community in this country watching. And seeing, I think it would have been bowlers like Joel Garner, Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding. I thought wow! This isn’t the cricket he was watching before! It got my attention, and I was glued to it. I was watching these huge, big strong physical bowlers coming and the ball whizzing past the batsmen’s head, it was dramatic and interesting this wasn’t the cricket I had seen before.
Off the back of that, during that summer me and my brother got my dad’s cricket bat, my dad played a bit. He played for Clifton Flax Bourton, he was a spinner and middle order with the bat, we got his old bat out and we found a cricket ball. Without any bloody pads or anything, we went to the field at the back of our house in Eastville and then we started playing that summer. No pads, that was my first ever memory before I’d played proper cricket. We used to play a lot, just in the field at the back of our house. My brothers about eight years older than me, bear in mind that I was about seven, and batting with no pads, he was about fifteen and he didn’t hold back! Luckily, he was really inaccurate, and it went all over the place. Then I remember bowling to him, and he just smashed it around the field, just like that scene from the Fast Show with the competitive dad. You know 112, 113, 114. That was me on the end of that! So that was my first memory of seeing cricket, watching the West Indies helped me to go out and play. It was a glorious summer.
You’ve previously mentioned that you started playing at Stapleton Cricket Club (oddly the same club that previous interviewee Ben Salisbury and I, played at, though none of us knew each other then) at around eight or nine years of age, which is pretty young. How did that come about?
I think I was playing for football for Bromley Heath under 10’s and there might be one or two players, like maybe the keeper Nick Adams for who went on to play for them for years and still does now, captaining the seconds, I think. I remember going along and remember Ian Crawford, a really prominent influence on my cricket. For those that don’t know he played for Gloucestershire, I think he was twelfth man in the 1977 Benson and Hedges final. He only played a handful of games at the highest level but one of the best cricketers and the nicest people I’ve ever met.
Funnily enough Ben Salisbury said exactly the same about him, in my interview with him.
He still does it now. I was taking my boy and he still coaches. Then I went on to play with Crawfs (Ian Crawford) but I didn’t really realise then, how good he was. Stapleton was very local to me, and I also just remembered the pitch. It looks likes its surrounded by loads of houses, really small and narrow but we used to play on the wicket at the far end near the cow field. Really short boundary on one side, really long on the other. I remember that when we were training, in one of my first games I was kind of plodding along and then I just hooked a ball, just instinctively and it just flew, I think it went for six, went quite flat. I didn’t know what I was doing but thought, I’m actually quite good at this! That was before Crawfs taught me how to play straight and play in the arc. Yes, that’s my earliest memories of playing for them, then I ended up playing for them all the way through youth cricket up to my early 20’s I think.
Cricket can be quite an expensive game, with bats, gloves even whites. Was that ever a barrier for you?
I didn’t even have a bat probably till I was about 16 because they always had a really nicely knocked in bat in the club kit that I’d like. Even at men’s cricket when I was playing for Bitton, I borrowed somebody else’s bat, I’m very superstitious and if I get a bat that I score runs with, then I have to use it next time. There was one chap, I would actually use his bat more than he would. He would come and say “for Christs sake, I can’t even use my own bat!” I’ve only ever really found one bat that I’ve liked, which I’ve got now which is a kookaburra, I like a light bat with a nice middle. There was one bat called Excalibur and every time I used it, just a little punch- Boosh!
In terms of that, I don’t think I ever really bought anything, that was a good thing about Stapleton they had everything you needed. The only thing I needed was whites, which I guess mum and dad bought. Even Wicket Keeping gloves belonged to the club. I’ve got a pair of gloves in in the loft, I’m not consciously a thief but I unconsciously seem to accumulate other people’s things. The ones in the loft are basically an Old Georgians pair.
I’ve even got a box which has “Jeff Fox” written on the side. It was a running joke when I was playing for Saint George, “Why have you got a box belonging to someone called Jeff Fox?”. Funnily enough I saw him at Bristol Rovers a few weeks ago. I used to play football and cricket with him at Old Georgians, God knows how I got his box but I used it for about 15 years when I didn’t used to see him. I got that pair of Wicket Keeping gloves upstairs but I don’t think I’ve bought a pair. I’ve either borrowed or “stolen” them.
How did you get on playing at Stapleton?
Well, I really wanted to be a footballer. I was a footballer that played cricket in the summer. I played cricket to a relatively decent level of men’s cricket but I certainly found, my level at Stapleton. I played about ten to twelve games in the first team. Whilst I was a keeper, I was agile so sometimes would be in the covers as I was quite quick as they had better keepers than me. I was batting at six, then it was “go seven Maggsy” then it was eight, nine. At that first team level, I just couldn’t see the ball when it left the bowlers hand.
There was a game against Pak Bristolians at Lodway, they had a bowler called Akram, not Wasim Akram but another one who was a Pakistani under 19, who I think went onto get about twenty full caps for Pakistan. It was a bouncy wicket and people were wrapping towels around them for extra protection before they went out to bat, it was very frightening. I went out at about number seven and I just couldn’t see the ball. I was playing like a bat on sonar! I actually hit two fours and I had no idea how! I was a good opening bat for second team cricket or firsts in Bristol & District but when you got to the Alliance League or Western League I wasn’t good enough for that level. Anyway Akram has taken about five wickets, scared the living daylights out of everybody. He bowls the ball down at me and I just play a forward defensive back to him and he stares at me. He does it again and I stare back at him. I didn’t like wearing a helmet and in those days it wasn’t compulsory. At the end of the over. I’m saying I might take the helmet off I don’t think I need it. My partner says, “I’d keep it on mate, if I were you”. I’m not sure but decided to keep it on for a couple more balls.
Next ball, he bangs it short, I’ve gone for the forward defensive, bangs me on my head and it takes me off my feet! It was comical but I reckon that I wouldn’t be talking to you now, if I’d taken that helmet off. From that moment on I literally couldn’t see the ball, he was that quick. Yet Crawfs and Ken Baker they were hooking him but I just wasn’t at that level of cricket. My hand, eye coordination wasn’t quick enough.
Even with keeping I realised it. I played at a club which had Colin Sharp (The Chief) one of the best keepers in local cricket, who would have no doubt gone on to play professional cricket, if it wasn’t for his motorcycle accident when he was younger. A right character, he would scare you to death if you were a youngster at the club. I went on tour as a fourteen year old with Stapleton, he kept wicket. He was about Sixty two, playing without the glasses that he normally wore, standing up to first team bowlers and was taking everything, even down the leg side. I asked him “how do you do that?” and he said that he just knew where the bounce was “but you can’t see, you haven’t got your glasses on” He said, it’s not about seeing, it’s about the bounce. I just don’t know how he did it. I was a decent second team, all right keeper but they had keepers like Geoff Sharman who was a good keeper and also Dave Bonehill who was a brilliant batsman and keeper. They were grooming me to be the next keeper for the first team but I cottoned on that it wasn’t right for me, lost my confidence a bit as they would shout “advice” at me from the side-lines. I focused a bit more on batting
Other than that West Indies team, what other cricketers inspired you as a youngster? Any Wicket Keepers?
Obviously Jack Russell, a bit of a local hero. He was also a little bit eccentric, which I quite liked. I always felt a little bit like that. I found that cricket was a place where you could be that. I did struggle in some dressing rooms in football where there’s this fine line of uniformity. Anyone that deviates from that narrow path is a bit weird. So whilst I was always better at football and I’ve got some great friends in the game, I’ve played in some football teams where I have literally hated the people have played with. Whereas with cricket, I always enjoyed it socially a lot more. The people who play cricket are just a bit more accepting, a bit more chilled. Dare I say it, a bit brighter in some ways. There is a bit of a herd mentality in football, which I struggled with. I think, and you can quote me on this, had I been Dutch or Italian or Spanish, I would have been accepted a bit more for my idiosyncrasies.
Back to inspirations, batting wise although I love the swashbuckling approach I had to work at batting. Crawfs was someone who was really prominent in my thinking about that, playing straight and the arc. I was technically probably a little better than a lot of batsmen of my age when I was young but I probably had about three scoring shots but I was really hard to get out. Stronger off the front foot than the back foot, which helps as an opening bat. I liked facing quick bowling, so actually some of the boring methodical batsmen like Boycott or Chris Tavare, I like that gritty sort of thing. Atherton, Jonathan Trott, often the ones that people find dull and boring. I think that’s because they were more similar to me. I stopped playing regularly four or five years ago but the amount of times that I’ve opened and was still there with eight or nine wickets down and I’m only on forty odd. I can bat all day. One of my friends John Fidkin was a big hitting Flintoff, Botham type. He’d get a sharp fifty or a duck, he used to hate batting with me. I would almost deliberately slow him down, just to wind him up. One of my favourite and best shots is “The Leave”.
We were playing in a charity game, only two overs each, chasing the total, an “all for fun” sort of game. I’m thinking, I’m going to wind-up Fidkin, so I’m padding up and he’s shouting at me “Oh Maggsy, you boring …. This is a charity game!” I basically batted out the two overs on purpose, just to wind him up. Probably didn’t get invited back for the next one!
So those sorts of players were a reflection of what type of batsman I was. I had a simple and limited technique that was effective at that level. However, when you were playing with people who were on the cusp of playing for the seconds at Gloucestershire, my technique was never going to be good enough. I extracted as much as I could from the ability that I had.
I’ve always liked those type of sportsmen. Even in snooker, everyone would like Jimmy White and I would like Terry Griffiths!
My dad hated it though, “Bloody Boycott, he’s playing for his average again, he’s just boring” I wonder if it was just a rebellion from me against my dad.
Any other standout memories from your playing days?
Oh yes, at one point I reluctantly went into captaincy, when I was at St George. I used to captain the Stapleton youth team and some youth football teams but from the ages of about 18-34 nobody asked me to captain a team, I’m not sure what that said about me as an adult.
Anyway, suddenly I had to do it. Every team has a couple of journeymen who make up the numbers, we certainly had one of those, lets call him “X”. One the good players in the team, we will call him “Y” came to me and said, “I’m not playing if you pick “X”. “Why?”, “I’m not telling you”. I wondered if it was about his wife or something like that. I asked around, turned out that “X” had given him out LBW about nine years earlier, when he was never out and he’s never spoken to him since. I said to “Y” that’s ridiculous but he wouldn’t have it.
In that same team, we had a dad and son, the mum left the dad and hooked up with a new bloke. Who was also in the team! The new chap was slightly Alan Partridge, completely oblivious about the awkward situation, he’d walk around saying “chewing gum anybody? Everyone OK?” The guy who was the dad, was this serious, stoical bloke, who probably wouldn’t tell you if something was bothering him. So this team was just utterly dysfunctional. I quite enjoyed it in some ways.
Finally, as mentioned earlier my son tried cricket but football has won him over. In our day, you could do both but now it sadly not often the case.
How do you feel about the way Test cricket has changed. This summer in particular it became a much faster game.
Well it’s always been interesting, I’m probably contradicting myself again now, but obviously I was previously reflecting on how I was, as a player. I worked in sport before I was a journalist, working in sports development and coaching cricket, as well as other sports football and basketball and I remember talking to an Aussie guy and it was really interesting. The first shot they teach you in England is a forward defensive, the first shot they teach you in Australia is a cover drive. That just sums up the psychology of the two nations. So I think I was a product of my environment.
I think the Aussies were probably the first team I saw batting in Test cricket, like it was a one day game. I remember saying, Test cricket is different, you’ve got the slips, you’ve got to build an innings and he said, “well it’s still a ball and you’ve still got to hit it! You Poms you over analyse everything” and I think there’s some truth to that. So actually whilst a lot of people talk about the influence of short-form cricket on the game, it has clearly had an impact on Test cricket, yet you did see some of the Aussies, like Gilchrist who revolutionised opening batting, then Marcus Trescothick did it for England.
Incidentally I played football with Trescothick. He played for Bromley Heath in goal. I actually made cry a few times by shouting at him, he was a keeper, had a good hands but he kept getting lobbed all the time, I would give him a hard time over that. I interviewed him years later for the “Bristol born and bred series” and I asked what I was like back then, he said “Well you were horrible really to be honest! We had a mutual friend called Eddy Greg who was also a brilliant cricketer at Keynsham like Marcus, who also played football for Bromley Heath, they were best mates. Sadly, Eddy died of cancer, so whenever Tress scored a century he’d raise his bat and look to the sky in memory of Eddy.
When it was Eddy’s funeral, I hadn’t seen Trescothick for several years as I’d been up at university in Huddersfield. He’d just broken into the England team so I thought I’d do a bit of a wind up. Everybody was in awe of him, so I went up and asked him what he was doing these days, “where are you working? Do you still play?” He was looking at me, what? I carried on, “Because you were a good cricketer weren’t you, I remember you being a half decent batsman. Do you still play?” Managed to keep it going for a bit before letting on that I was just joking.
Anyway, back to my point. I think that Trescothick was England’s first opening bat that would just go in and smash it. He always had a good eye, didn’t necessarily move his feet much, just a great player of short ball cricket. That was really us emulating the Aussies. Prior to that the thinking was , you must have a Tavare and a Boycott. You need one of them but you probably don’t need two.
My best opening partnerships were always with people who looked to get on with it. It took the pressure off me. I could just nudge and nurdle and build an innings. I think that that period was probably the start of subtle changes being applied to test cricket. It may have lost some of its nuance, and some games now end on day three, however I can now sit and watch, like my dad, five days of test cricket on the settee. It can still end in a draw and I can really enjoy it. For people who haven’t come through the ranks of playing cricket, things had to change, it had to become more entertaining. Its obviously changed now with the shots that are played. There used to be shots that you couldn’t play in Test cricket. Why not? Before Pietersen, nobody was switch hitting until he did, then suddenly its like “oh you can do that can you?” Also when Sri Lanka opened the bowling with the spinner, Muralitharan in a one day game! “You can’t do that!” say the old guard.
I think Test cricket is the pinnacle but we need to get out of the old mindset of it being the only form that matters. I was in India at the birth of the IPL and that’s brilliant. They do value test cricket as well as that, why does it need to be one or the other?
I’ve got a lot of frustrations with the ECB over “The 100”. Why did we need to recreate anew format, I tell you it’s because of English arrogance because we weren’t leading the world, compared to things like The Big Bash, they thought that we had to get our own thing. No need, the T20 stuff is fine. In fact, I would almost say keep Test cricket and T20 but lose the other one day competitions, they can go a bit flat in the middle.
Regarding playing in different formats. I played in a six a side tournament for Bitton, Gloucestershire sent some players along for it. Each batsman only faced six balls, so it changed your mindset. I was skipping down the wicket looking for runs. Someone said to me afterwards “If you can do that, why does it take you five overs to get off the mark, every time you play for us on a Saturday?” It’s just the psychology of the match situation. Look at the likes of Stokes and Bairstow, traditional one day players who are playing Test cricket brilliantly. They can play sensibly when they need to, but they can go up the dial, we’ve had test cricketers that have been unable to do that.
I like the characters that England have now with likes of Stokes and Bairstow, especially with what has gone on in their families. They just front it up and I like that, under Stokes now it looks like we’ve got a bit of fire in our belly. Something English cricket often backed away from. There is now an understanding that they need to entertain, if not the game will die. They are trying to bring crowds back.
On that topic. I’m aware that when I’m watching cricket there are a lot of people of my age watching the games. You have worked with a lot of young people over the years. How does cricket bring in a younger, more diverse crowd?
What does work are effective, grass roots initiatives. Rather than the “Medal Myth” which implies that people will follow the sport if they see people winning medals. There is some truth in that but if your parents can’t afford to buy you the kit, it doesn’t matter how often you see Andy Murray winning Wimbledon. You haven’t got a route in. The more kids play a sport, the more likely they are to watch it.
One of the problems that we have is that cricket is not played in schools anymore. Or if it is, it’s only in the private schools. Which is why the professional game in this country is overwhelming made up of people from a private school background.
There is also a problem with certain communities that they don’t feel welcome at cricket. It can be seen as a bit boozy, which put some people off. There is a problem in Bristol, with both City and Rovers as well as Gloucestershire. You see very few people from minority groups. It’s something I’ve written about in a couple of articles one in the Bristol Cable and one in the Daily Telegraph about rugby. When that’s highlighted people can become a little defensive. I recently interviewed Syd Lawrence for the Bristol Unpacked podcast (Well worth a listen), and spoke of the time when he, Courtney Walsh and Mark Alleyne were playing for Gloucestershire and you had people from the black community that were watching.
It may be quite a leap to get people from the Somalian community in Bristol to watch cricket. It shouldn’t be that difficult to get the South Asian and Caribbean communities to come along. They are playing cricket already. We’ve got a thriving cricket scene in Bristol featuring the likes of Pak Bristolians, Bristol Pakistanis, Bristol West Indian Phoenix, Bristol Indians, Bristol Sri Lankans it’s all there but it doesn’t seem to transfer to the matchday experience.
You can’t just expect people to come to you. You have to go out and do the outreach work, build relationships, trust and understanding. Then it’s a gradual process, building a bridge. Gloucestershire has to take some responsibility for that. I’d ask the question, “What are you doing?” I know the community trust there are doing some great work with different communities in inner city Bristol, yet that doesn’t translate to people coming to watch. Now it could be that some just think Cricket is quite boring to watch, it’s about them feeling that it is, for them.
A very simple thing that Bristol Rovers did recently is related to food. If you turn up at the County Ground and all you have is Hot Dogs and Burgers, when you don’t eat meat, or only eat halal meat, or a certain type of food, there may be nothing for you. Rovers now have a Jerk Chicken van (there is a similar thing at Bristol City/Bristol Bears) with a guy called Ashley. He’s a very well respected member of the community, so people are saying, “well if Ashley is going, it must be alright there”. So just by having Chicken and Rice and someone who is trusted, I have never seen so many black people at Rovers in my life. So it’s about catering the fan experience to the people.
The other is just giving twenty tickets to youth groups and schools. It’s about getting them there, then making them stay there. Then getting them to stay there of their own will. It’s not easy and it’s not a quick fix but having people like Syd Lawrence and Ashley being visible can really help to show people that it is a place for them. Syd Lawrence said on that Podcast chat, that he accepts that the club can do more and that he will challenge the club to do so.
There were couple of mornings this season where Gloucestershire did try to bring different groups in. One time it was a schools sessions including my old school, Chester Park.
I went there!
On another occasion, there were a lot of refugee youngsters that were there. One young lad behind us absolutely loved it, sadly the next time he wants to go he probably won’t be able to afford a ticket.
It’s good that they did that, they do need to make it more affordable though. They have sorted out the bar situation now. I got in a bit of trouble for pointing out the long queues there in the past.
Also important to say that not many people come from the white working class estates like, Southmead, Hartcliffe and Knowle West either. It’s not just about culture, it’s also about class. Class wasn’t an issue when I was in Yorkshire. The same with Rugby Union, there is a class issue in England, it’s not like that in the valley of South Wales. So these things are not set in stone. Gloucestershire need to develop what Bristol Bears have done, get local lads playing. They have Joe Joyce from Southmead, Ellis Genge from Knowle West, it won’t suddenly change things without the infrastructure but it is going to help.
It helps to pick up interest. It works in journalism, I used to visit local areas of Bristol, places that only got covered when there was a bad news story. Chat to the locals about what matters to them. Then you would get some real engagement as word spread that you wanted to know the reality of their situation. You need to see it to believe it. More kids are playing rugby in Southmead because Joe Joyce goes down there to see them. It works If you suddenly had a young Asian lad from Eastville opening the batting, you would get more people coming down to have a look. It is a long game though.
There is a really good example of where sport has been very effective in engaging with a different community. It’s Bradford City, there ground is right in the middle of a predominately South Asian council estate. All the kids used to play football in the street, on match day though the kids all go into the houses. At half time they would come out and play then go back in when the game started again. None of these families would be inside the stadium. This is around ten years ago. So the club started knocking on a few doors, asking a few questions. “ You clearly like football, if we gave you free tickets, would you go?”
“Probably not.”
“Why, what’s stopping you?”
Turned out to be the connotations of the far right in football, violence, alcohol, scared of racism all these sorts of barriers. So they did this long piece of work about educating the fans inside the stadium. Gradually bought some into the grounds, did community work which lead to the Bradford Bantams and they now consistently have 3,000 to 3,500 fans from that community, a lot of which are women. It’s a mark of what you can do. You have to be really honest about where you are, clubs are often very defensive about this.
I’ve probably written about this stuff more than anybody else in Bristol. Because I have, I’ve been unpopular and side-lined a bit, I was saying this stuff quite early. Now it’s a bit different. You need to be honest, you need to take criticism in good faith, you need to be really intentional and you need to go out and talk to people. Get a plan together and be committed to doing it. And then you can do it.
I don’t see any reason why Gloucestershire and any of our sports clubs can’t do that. The same is true for some of those estates in Bristol who feel that cricket and rugby is a bit posh for them, that they aren’t welcome there.
I don’t think we are unique here the Flintoff TV show captured it, people are aware of it now and are trying to shift the dial. I think there is though something about Bristol. Maybe because it’s a bit isolated from other large cities. For a long time a small group controlled everything including the sporting clubs and also controlled the messages that came out of the city. Post Colston, that’s been blown open.
As a Broadcaster yourself, were there any voices in cricket commentary that inspired you? (this leads into a more involved chat about current media attitudes)
The broadcasting came much later for me, I wanted to play. I wanted to be a footballer and I loved cricket in the summer. I got released by Southampton when I was 18, I’d played England Schoolboys football, had clubs after me, went to Bristol Rovers for a bit but it didn’t work out. Then the rave scene kicked in! Sport became less of a priority, but that’s a different story.
I went to University and did English, I was offered the chance to go to Cardiff to do journalism but I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, then I think I ended up not really having a basket to put my eggs in! That was the first time that I did think about that but I took a different career direction and it was about ten to twelve years later that I came back to it. I actually wanted to be a journalist, not a broadcaster.
When I was younger though, I did love watching football and cricket but it was about playing. I would see commentators as the slightly nerdy, autograph hunter types that were usually crap at sport. I would go with my dad to the County Ground to watch Gloucestershire, he was a great watcher of cricket, somebody that loved sport for the social reasons. He would watch any sport on TV and go and watch in person. I always preferred playing, so I would watch football if I wasn’t playing, the same with cricket. Nowadays I take my son and one of the problems with sport now is that lots of football and cricket supporters are, let’s be frank, idiots, who don’t know an awful lot about sport. They will shout out utter nonsense after six pints, so because I’ve played a bit, I get annoyed with that. It’s the difference between supporters and fans. I don’t mean to be snobby about that but with sports broadcasting now, I have an issue with phone-ins. Geoff Twentyman has one on Radio Bristol, he’s brilliant, they do it a lot on Talksport as well, getting the “fans voice” and I’ll get shot down in flames but 90% don’t know what they are talking about. We see it in politics, which I cover as well. It’s the “Let’s go down the High Street to see what people think” on a really nuanced topic. It’s not being elitist to say there is no point in asking “Dave from The Red Lion”, what he thinks on the Brussels treaty, he’s not likely to know the finer details.
That’s what happened in sport. It feels like there is a little bit of pandering to fans in sports broadcasting. Geoff Twentyman handles it brilliantly, I would find it harder to disguise my irritation. Its’s difficult, as I came to journalism from a different route and like to see myself as the voice of the people but on some level, I’m incredibly dismissive of those voices. I think it’s caused by well meaning producers feeling really self-conscious about being in a media elite bubble, so they overcompensate with this “Let’s get the voice of the ordinary man”. So you get most local radio presenters, who aren’t representative of the areas they serve, how they do get a representative voice, is by getting “ordinary Jack from Keynsham” and it’s like a patting on the head thing. So I’m quite cynical and have been quite critical of local and national media, which can make me unpopular.
I’d like to think that a lot that I have said, has come home to roost. For example, the lack of representation in terms of diversity or accents, I’ve been talking about that for nigh on a decade and the BBC and others are trying to catch up. Because I came through community radio and media, I’m used to trying to represent accurately that very local voice. So you find that things like Radio Bristol or the Bristol Post will say they represent local people, but actually, no they don’t. And then there is the issue of balance, I do more stuff for national BBC and the World Service, than I do local stuff. One of the things I love about the BBC is the idea of “balance”, but it has put itself into a corner. Every subject will have a difference of opinion, but not every opinion is of equal validity. Some things are just, right. And some things are just, wrong. So can say we’ve a climate professor of 48 years, and we have Dave from the Red Lion, and say their points are equally valid. Obviously not. If that’s me being an elitist then, yes, I’m an elitist.
The next person to have a cricket chat with me, is Dr Adam Rutherford. Rather scarily he probably knows more about what makes me, actually me, than I do. He knows why my body does what it does, as I (used to) try align my foot movement with what my eyes could see, when that tempting long hop came towards me. Sorry, those who used to watch me play will already know, foot movement wasn’t really “my thing”, so that could well be a false premise.
It’s not just me though, he knows more about you and everyone, yes everyone, you know, or have known. He is a lecturer in Genetics, so that’s why he knows so much about you, me and everyone else. That he knows so much of this stuff is mind blowing to ordinary people like you and I, who struggle to work out how many runs an over we need to score, to reach a target of 137 off 11 overs. This though isn’t even the great thing about Adam.
His really extraordinary talent, is that he is able to simplify some of the most complex issues. To such a degree that, for a while, my feeble brain, can briefly understand the most incredible scientific facts. Then I remember that I have a packet of crisps that need my urgent attention, and the knowledge slips away.
He keeps trying though, so you have probably come across his wonderful work through his skills as a writer and broadcaster. He is a first and foremost a scientist (I’ve seen a picture of him in a lab coat), he is though, one that loves to share his knowledge, rather than lock it away, in a lab. I was going to say a dusty lab, but I suspect that labs are actually amongst the cleanest places on earth.
To this end, you may well have heard him cropping up on Radio 4, or presenting TV documentaries. It could have been on “The Curious Cases of Ruthford and Fry” (for he is the Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry is, well, you’ve guessed it), probably the greatest double act since Lille and Thompson. He regularly hosts Radio 4’s “Start The Week” and was the host of “Inside Science” on the same network for eight years. There are shows on Long Covid, AI And Robotics and well just about anything else that is puzzling you.
Then there are the TV shows on Anatomy and Synthetic Biology plus others. That’s enough for anyone surely? Well, not for Adam, he also writes books including the sadly necessary “How To Argue With A Racist which received wide ranging praise. His most recent book Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics is being made into a BBC Radio 4 series called Bad Blood. Also active with his myriad talks, lectures and, well you get the picture. A very busy chap indeed.
Alongside all of this noble work, he still finds time to indulge his love for cricket. He plays cricket in the company of other writers with The Authors XI, you can find out more about them at https://www.authorscc.co.uk
As for Adam himself, his website has lots information about his work at adamrutherford.com
Thanks for doing this Adam, what are you earliest memories of cricket?
Watching and listening with my dad, though I can’t recall any specific Test matches. I know everyone my age says their first memory was the ’81 Ashes, but for me it’s more a constant presence in my early life. TMS and BBC2. The West Indies and New Zealand (my dad was raised there, and I now have dual citizenship there) were the teams that I sought out, Mike Holding and Richard Hadlee.
Did you play cricket as a child? If so, how did it go?
Played from the age of about 8, always as wicket keeper batter. I was ok, good eye, but poor technique with the bat, and always played off the back foot, which as an adult I have tried to coach out of me, and probably given up now. I captained my school u12 team in the annual gala match against the u13s at school, and trod on my wicket first ball. Golden Duck Captain. I don’t think about that much these days. Only once a week or so.
Was there anyone that particularly encouraged your interest in the game?
Dad and my grandad, both also just very sharp hand-eye coordination. Even when Grandad was in a wheelchair at the end of his life, we’d sit in the garden doing slip catches for hours on end
As a broadcaster yourself, are there any cricket voices on radio or TV, that you have special fondness for?
From the old guard it was always CMJ and Richie Benaud. Sangakkara is good value, and I could listen to Ebony Rainford-Brent reading the crossword.
Can you look back on any individual game or maybe Test series, that really captivated you, starting your fondness for the game.
The Windies teams of the late 80s early 90s were the players I fell in love with. England touring there in 1990, Curtly Ambrose destroying the tail in the 4th test. 10 wickets in the match. It was brutal.
When the game started to draw you in, who were the players that really stood out for you?
Ambrose, Walsh, Gower.
I assume that your day job is pretty hot on detail and statistical rigour. Were you attracted to the statistical side of cricket? Did you complete your own scoresheets and compile your own statistics as a youngster?
If anything it’s the opposite. In science we use these tools to lean in towards truth. In cricket we are looking for beauty in those endless numbers.
As you grew older, did watching cricket become easier or harder? The benefits of money, sometimes lose out to the lack of time, from my experience.
Going to Test Matches is the highlight of my Summer, so I go into every ballot full throttle, and hoover up as many tickets as I can, mostly Oval where I’m a member, and sometimes Lords. But took my dad up to Old Trafford, and we always plan to get to other grounds, never quite manage it. Then I’ve got the redistribution issue: I always reserve at least one for my Dad, try to get my brothers along to some, and I take my son to the T20 at the Oval to watch Surrey.
I know that you play cricket for the Authors Cricket team, who have had some pretty impressive results. How would you describe yourself as a player these days?
Competent with the gloves, a biffer with the bat. Kevin Pietersen ruined my batting ten years ago, because I’d spent years trying to get forward and play on the off, against all my physical predilections. Taking a Leg stump guard, and two stepping into the pitch Alec Stewart style, just to get forward. All gone to pot, cos my favourite shot is leaning back, eyes closed and twatting it to cow corner. Dunno what the ground or the offside are for, really.
Do you have one shot, delivery or catch, which sticks in your mind? Your finest moment as it were.
Unlike many cricketers I have almost zero recollection of anything I do on the pitch. Other players seem to recall every single ball they’ve ever faced, and will tell you about each delivery from 15 years ago in forensic detail. I’ve had a fun season this year though, three things stick out. One was on tour in Corfu, which the Authors XI do every year, my flight was late and the match had already started, when I touched down. I got changed in the back of a taxi from the airport, ran onto the pitch to relieve Alex Preston who was keeping in my place, and my first touch was pouching a feathered snick at shoulder height on the leg side. Second achievement was smashing a car window for six. Third though was my lifetime high score, 81, at Wadebridge in Cornwall against Jack Stein’s team of chefs. Dropped at least twice in the first ten, and from that point on, the stars aligned. Unfortunately, according to Authors’ laws, touring stats don’t count. Bugger.
Have you tried to bring your scientific skills to cricket. For instance have you deduced the perfect formula for producing reverse swing?
Not at all. Aiming the ball at the stumps is hard enough.
Is watching, or listening to cricket, a social thing for you. Do you watch or listen on your own, or is it an experience best shared from your experience?
Entirely social, apart from at home when it’s just me and TMS. At games or matches, as you might imagine, the bantz for the Authors is rather… literary. But during lockdown, the literal highlight was a tournament of Book Cricket, run by the journalist and teammate David Owen. You pick a themed team (Sebastian Faulks’ Jane Austen Characters, mine Ipswich Town Players from the 80s), and a page number, and David plays out a full match in real time on WhatsApp, each letter a different ball and score. Remarkably dramatic matches, often to the last ball. The italicised message ‘David is typing’ provided the greatest tension of a cricketless summer.
Have you ever watched a game overseas?
Not watched, but played in Corfu many times – which has a long cricketing history – and once in a match in Saumur in France. Best tea ever. We’re currently planning a tour to Lebanon for next Spring.
Any favourite cricket writers or books?
Jon Hotten is the master. His latest, and Bat Ball and Field is a masterpiece. The man is a philosopher poet on cricket, and he knows a LOT about 1980s heavy metal too.
Which players have given you the most pleasure over the years? Were you able to see them in the flesh?
I was at Lords when Glen Mcgrath got his 500th wicket in the ’05 Ashes. That was pretty special. The batter that I loved and saw the most was Ian Bell, ironically a bit of a bunny for Mcgrath during that series.
Do you have a favourite format of the game?
I used to be a 5 day Test purist/snob, and it remains the greatest format for any sport, and possibly the high point of human evolution. The fact that it keeps evolving and still produces the greatest drama of any stage is testament to its greatness. But taking my boy to the T20 to see some tonking is a joy too. And though it’s much maligned, I thought the women’s 100 is a truly great tournament.
Anything else that you would like to add about your relationship with cricket?
Cricket is a vibe. God, I wish I had played more when I was younger and my body didn’t creak as much. I had covid pretty bad in early 2020, and long covid for ages too, but it was crouching behind the stumps that were the moments of peace, where all you are thinking about is the ball. I’m not good enough to warrant this kind of pseudery about it, but the whole immersion in those moments, and the days building up to them. I love the kit, tightening studs, or clipping nails, or strapping various pads or nowadays knee supports, the rituals, and minuscule adjustments as if I were half decent. And then once is a while it all just works. When I came off at Wadebridge after my best innings ever, I got a big hug from the skipper and then I immediately texted my dad. I’m a 47 year old man.
Thanks for all the nice feedback on my interviews with Gideon Coe and Mark Taylor. It’s been lovely to hear how much people have enjoyed them.
Next up is Bristolian musician and composer, Ben Salisbury. I’ve know Ben for many years. We used to play football together, initially through a classic Monday night, it could be five a side, it could be fifteen side game. That group of people, went on to form Bryan Munich, yes “Bryan” who played in Bristol Casual League, designed with the elder gentleman involved, it had the brilliant idea of rolling subs and having a relaxed attitude to winning or losing. Ben was a tenacious player, with an outstanding ability to injure himself in the pursuit of lost causes. Every team needs one of those.
If that wasn’t enough, he was busy providing the music for one of the most popular TV shows in the country. You may not think you know his work, however you probably do. His music is featured on the David Attenborough “Life of..” series and also the beautiful “Nature’s Great Events”. Since those days of Natural History scores, he has move into film and drama soundtracks as well. Working with his partner Geoff Barrow on extraordinary films such as Ex Machina (which won an Ivor Novello award), Annihilation (which was on the shortlist for an Oscar), Free Fire and many more. He often makes the cinema an unsettling place to visit! Ben was also asked by Beyoncé to compose the soundtrack to her documentary film “Life Is But A Dream”, the most watched documentary on the HBO network. His work was also all over the soundtrack for the recent TV series Devs and Archive 81.
Ben contributed backing vocals to Deep water by Portishead, one of their most intriguing songs. And with his work with the group Drokk, Dolman and others, it’s clear that Ben is very much in demand.
Despite all this, he can still be spotted wandering around the ground in Bristol, watching Glos, looking for his son with a confused expression on his face.
**Just after sending the into to this piece to Ben for approval, I heard from a friend that Ben had pulled his hamstring in the Monday night football that he, and my former teammates still play. I checked with Ben, he confirmed the news regarding his injury and that, reassuringly, it was caused whilst chasing the very definition of a lost cause.
Thanks for doing this Ben. What are your earliest memories of cricket?
It’s probably receiving a pair of left-handed batting gloves from my godfather, which is why I bat left-handed. I was about five and I wouldn’t take them off. I don’t think I even knew what they were for really. That’s what sparked my interest. My dad was always in to cricket so we played a lot of cricket and my earliest memory of professional cricket was Boycotts hundredth hundred, which I remember my dad and I, I must have been about six I think, listening to it on the radio. We were up in North Wales and family members were getting very animated and excited. I think one of them was very anti-Boycott. There are two camps with him: “Why do you want to care whether he gets it?”, “How long is it going to take to get under 100?”, “Yeah it’s just watching paint dry, or listening to paint dry!” I remember being fascinated that they were so involved in this thing that was going on, on a radio. I’m wondering what was it all about?
Then, just played loads of cricket as a kid. We were lucky enough to have a garden, so played family cricket with my cousins. Beach cricket as well but then my dad realised how much we were into it. My dad was into it as well.
Did he play for anyone?
He played at school and was quite good, then then hadn’t played at all until I was a kid. I remember him buying a book, “Cricket from Father to Son” it’s about how, as a dad, to teach your kid cricket. We were lucky to have a garden that was long enough to have a cricket net in it. So we could play proper hardball stuff from the age of 9. As a bowler you could have a run up if you opened the kitchen door!
Your dad didn’t try to bounce you out?
No, he bowled spin. I enjoyed it. It’s why I became mainly a bowler. My mate Simon and I would just play all the time in the garden. He became very good at defending balls that reared up off a length and I became very good at bowling them! Our neighbours became very good at fetching hard balls that had careered into their garden.
No injuries?
No thankfully. My early memories of playing cricket, are back garden cricket in the nets with my mate Simon and then a few others when I found other kids in the area who wanted to play.
My friend lived in a house with a shared drive between the houses. The batter would be in the garage. He was a fast bowler, so would start his run up from across the road, run up the driveway, swerve around the side of the house, then bowl.
Yes, my run-up did have a kink in it, due to starting my run-up in the kitchen.
Did you retain that?
I sort of did. I had a very weird run up as a kid. I wonder if that was because of the kitchen starting point.
After the “Kitchen Run Up” years, what came next? Did you play in a school team?
No, as you probably know, I went to a comprehensive school in Bristol. There was no, literally, no cricket. It’s almost like it was a sport from another country. Nothing! I don’t think that any of the comprehensive schools in Bristol played.
We sort of had a team, but we didn’t really have anyone to play against.
We didn’t even have a pitch, didn’t have nets, no games, nothing. Well maybe when I got to about 5th form, possibly. It just wasn’t a thing, which was a real shame for the state of the game, at the time and probably still now.
But personally, it meant that my dad realised I was massively in cricket and so he took me and a bunch of mates to Stapleton Cricket Club. We played youth cricket there and that was amazing. They had an amazing youth set up. Really dedicated people like Ian Crawford, who ran the youth side of things, with a guy called Phil Johns. I could spend the whole summer from the age of 10 till about 17 playing cricket. I just played in the club cricket setting at Stapleton. Anyone whose seen me playing in the last 20 years would think I’m some sort of Walter Mitty figure, but I was actually quite good as kid. Mainly because of playing in the back garden nets and playing all the time for Stapleton. So yes, I ended up playing a lot, captained the county side and the youth side from under 13, and so my whole summers were taken up playing cricket. But then I peaked at the age of about 14, which is not ideal! By the age of 16 or 17, everyone else was getting better and I was stuck. I had some wilderness years when I gave it up which is a real shame.
I wish I’d played more as a young adult, before I’d had kids. I’d love to play more now. I’m terrible now, I had a period where I didn’t want to play because I still remember being quite good as a kid, but now if anyone is looking someone who wants a fairly poor quality player, but can talk a good game, that’s me.
Should we put you down as a medium pacer?
Yes, a military medium, slogger, whose arm might come out of its socket. Likely to try to take a flying catch, probably getting injured in the process. Those summers as a kid, I spent the virtually the whole time at the County Ground if I wasn’t at Stapleton, as they gave you a really cheap membership at Gloucestershire as you were a junior club cricketer. We spent whole time bothering the players, not really watching much cricket, getting old bits of kit from them. I had an old bat of Andy Stovold, which I could hardly lift up, that I insisted on trying to play with. If you were there long enough, you just became part of the fixtures of the ground, like unpaid ground staff. I remember feeding balls into the bowling machine for Syd Lawrence.
That was one of the great things about cricket, the access to the players was so easy, you could be side by side Test cricketers.
Yes, in those days each county had two overseas players, who were superstars. You’d be messing around then Joel Garner would come on to bowl, or Viv Richards would be batting, my hero’s. Then later they’d be walking around the ground and you could talk to them. I’ve got very found memories of those days. I saw some brilliant cricket. I remember seeing Joel Garner hitting a six that broke the clock in the pavilion at Bristol. Also remember an amazing innings from Viv Richards. I ran up to the ground after school as I heard he was batting. I think that, at the time, it was one of the fastest hundreds that had been scored, amazing player to watch. That Gloucestershire side of the 80’s was also great to watch.
I stopped going for a while whilst at University but then started going again during that incredible run of One Day success that Glos had, great memories of that Nat West final against Somerset in 1999 (See heading Photo). When the M4 was a convoy of tractors. There is a good argument to be had, that Glos invented the way One Day cricket is played now. The whole approach to limited over tactics started to change.
You mentioned listening to cricket on the radio earlier. Was radio and TV coverage important to you?
I love the radio. Cricket is probably the only sport that really works on radio. I have to admit that today’s broadcasters are pretty good. You can romanticise about the old days but if you were to stick Fred Truman on, you’d get bored of him pretty quickly. Whereas Jonathan Agnew and Isa Guha are pretty good. Also most of the Sky team are good. However, in term of memories, that first Test of the summer, turning on the telly, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Peter West popping up, Richie Benaud. I’d get excited about that about a week before it happened. It used to just be on in everyone’s house, just there in the corner of the room.
It’s a shame that it isn’t the case anymore, going back to what we were talking about earlier. If you don’t have a dad who was into cricket, you wouldn’t have a route into it. All the representative games I played was 90% private school kids, if you don’t see it or play it, how can most kids get into the game.
Hopefully its better now but the two most talented players I played with as a kid, played for Bristol West Indies and they got lost in the system. One of them was properly quick but they just didn’t know how to handle him. Everyone knew it, but there was no pathway to develop his talent.
Was there a player, game or series that cemented your love of the game?
I have to be honest and say that, much as I disagree with him now politically, my love of cricket coincided with Ian Botham’s introduction to the England team. I’d stop everything when Botham came into bat, I’d knock off school! The Botham’s Ashes series in 1981 was sort of the high point of that. I watched it all! You couldn’t take me away from the telly, thought it was amazing. Also in terms of amazing series, I went to the first Test of the 2005 Ashes series when Glen McGrath stood on the ball and twisted his ankle. Also happened to be backpacking in Australia in 94/95 at the same time as the Barmy Army started. We weren’t part of it but did hang around on the fringes and had some interesting experiences. It was amazing how you could hang out with the players.
Also, just to confirm that, as mentioned earlier, Viv Richards and Joel Garner were right at the top for me, which as a Gloucestershire supporter was weird.
As a musician, so not having a conventional 9-5 working life, how easy do you find it to get to games? Also, now that your son is a member, has that bought you back to watching more often?
Yeah, because they seem to be doing the same sort scheme as I had as a kid. Especially if you are signed up early for kids membership, you get a shirt and you get to go to any of the games. So he went to quite a lot games last season. As an adult, you get one free game as an adult guardian as well. I always would go to the, you know, the bigger one day games. I wanted to get back to going to a bit of 4 day cricket but I haven’t often got the time to go for a full day. It’s a shame they don’t do an after lunch time ticket but it probably wouldn’t work out financially. My son has a ticket again for next season and hopefully he’ll be dragging me down there. The variety of cricket you can see in Bristol is great. We watched the England Women’s T20 international game, The Blast games, I’m a fan of. As the hundred doesn’t happen here, I’ve got no connection with it, but my son would love to see that. We’ve watched a few games on the telly but it’s difficult to root for Welsh Fire given the traditional rivalry between Bristol and Cardiff.
Is watching and listening to cricket, best as a shared experience. Or is it something that gives you a space of your own for a while?
It can definitely be both, it’s actually one of the few sports that can be both. I love the shared experience. I love going to the Test match as I did with you, in a group of people but I would quite happily tip up to game, sit and watch for a bit. I even find it difficult to walk past, if I’m out in the country and I go past a village cricket match, I could just sit down to watch for a bit. I think that’s one of the joys of the sport. It can be communal or individual.
Any favourite writers about the game?
I enjoy Simon Hughes, but haven’t read much for a while. I always enjoyed The Guardian writer David Foot who sadly died last year. I used to get The Cricketer magazine. Not many books though. The occasional autobiography but none have really stuck with me. There have been some good films. “Fire In Babylon” was brilliant. There is space out there for a really good cricket drama. There was that terrible Bodyline series, I couldn’t watch it in the end, because the cricket scenes were so bad. They’d show Larwood bowling, this fearsome fast bowler taking a wicket, they’d cut to the ball just bouncing and nudging off the bails. You need to see the stump cartwheeling out of the ground! I’ve never seen cricket captured in a film, as well as they have done with football and rugby. Maybe it’s down to audience size, though plenty of people in India would watch.
And we know who would be up for doing the soundtrack Ben!
Oh yes, absolutely. I’m there!
Having seen you at Gloucestershire games, are they “your” team? Or, don’t you see cricket as being that tribal?
Gloucestershire are definitely my team but as I alluded to earlier, and I think it’s the beauty of cricket and it must be something to do with it being a game of individuals, moulded into being a team sport. Much more than any other sport, you can be much more into individuals, wanting to see individuals perform, whatever team they are playing for. Even with your supposed arch-enemy when I was growing up – Somerset. I loved Botham, Richards and Garner, I was very torn watching Gloucestershire playing Somerset in those days. I’d prefer to have seen Botham and Richards smashing it around the park even against Gloucestershire. Which didn’t mean that I didn’t want Gloucestershire to win! It’s about wanting to see the great players do amazing individual things. If Hampshire came, I wanted to see Gordon Greenidge and still now, however much you have a rivalry with Australia, you’d pay big money to see Shane Warne bowl again. So it isn’t as tribal, I think, because of that in a way. You are more invested in the game and individual performances than you are with any other sport. You want to see a good game – although there may be exceptions like the Ashes! Then again, the strange thing with the one-day game, you don’t want the other team to do too badly if they are batting first, so you aren’t tribally invested in it. It’s not, win at all costs. You want to watch a game but also, you want to watch brilliant cricket. There’s nothing better than watching a battle between a batter and a great fast bowler, no runs can be being scored but it can be incredibly intense.
We’ve spoken a lot about favourite players, any that we haven’t discussed?
Actually, yes current players. Yeah I loved watching Stokes and Bairstow last summer. I was a massive David Gower fan, he was another one that I’d come in from the garden to watch. I also loved Derek Randall and the way he threw himself around the field. For Gloucestershire, Syd Lawrence, Jack Russell, Kevin Curran. I think I’m really lucky to have gone up to the County Ground and seen so many of those in the flesh.
Do have a favourite format of the game?
Test cricket is the pinnacle for me. Sounding like every cricket bore in the country but it does worry me that we are only just about clinging on to it. It’s my favourite form of sport. There is nothing better than a hard fought 5 day test match. Nothing can beat that. Having said that, I love all forms. I take the kids to one-day games. I haven’t been to watch four-day cricket. I feel a slight hypocrite about that, as I want it to survive. Mainly because I want Test match cricket to survive and that can’t happen without another long form competition. I think it’s totally possible to think of red and white ball cricket as different sports and love them both in different ways. But if you asked me which one I couldn’t live without, it would be Test cricket. I am concerned about it’s future. In England its healthy, games sell out, there is a big demand for tickets. Sadly, that isn’t the case in other parts of the world. It’s strange when you go to the West Indies, how incredibly knowledgeable everyone is about the game. Every taxi you get in, every person you talk to. And yet, they aren’t going to the games. Something isn’t going right there. Even in India the test match crowds aren’t what you would hope for.
I don’t envy the people trying to solve the scheduling issues in the game. You have to have some sort of franchise short form tournament in the country, or players will just go elsewhere. If you are a young kid playing today, would you want to be practising your forward defensive, becoming this generations Boycott or Tavare. Or would you want to be Liam Livingstone?
I’d love to go to the West Indies to see a West Indies – England Test match in Barbados. That’s a dream match.
Tongue in cheek question – Have you been approached to provide music for The Hundred?
Not sure The Hundred would benefit from weird, horror, sci-fi electronica!
Maybe when things are going a bit wrong!
In fact, the weird alien theme from the film “Annihilation”, has actually become a meme with the kids. So maybe if a batter does something really horrific, that could work. I’ll suggest it. Can always do with the royalties!
Anything else to mention that we haven’t discussed?
No, I’ve waffled on enough! Pick the bones out of that. It’s just brilliant to talk about cricket isn’t it.
It is, and it was lovely to have this chat. Thanks very much for your time, Ben.
I’m delighted to say that the Mark Taylor interview had some very nice feedback, so it looks like my decision to run a series of these chats was a good one. Our next guest is also from the media world, and of a similar vintage.
Gideon Coe has been a familiar voice on radio for many years now. Over the years he initially worked as a sports reporter on BBC GLR, then BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio 4. With other occasional media work as well, he’s very much the all rounder who has been around for ever. You could look on him as the broadcasting equivalent of Kent’s Darren Stevens, which would be handy as (spoiler alert), Gid reveals his long affiliation with that very county.
Whilst the impressive Darren Stevens has finally called time on his fantastic career, luckily this is not the case for Mr Coe. He is one of the few remaining DJ’s on BBC 6 music who have been on air since the station began in 2002. Incredibly, that is before Darren Stevens moved from Leicestershire to Kent. His evening show is a wonderfully eclectic mixture of music, drawing on the BBC archives for amazing session tracks and live recordings, he also shares a delightful array of records, CD’s, tapes and, well anything really.
Bob Dylan could have been talking about Gid’s music taste, on his recent(ish)song “I Contain Multitudes”, which featured several time on the late evening show that Gideon has hosted since 2007. Music from any point in the last hundred years and any nation on the globe, sits comfortably alongside all important nature sightings, train rumbling updates during home shed broadcasts and the occasional Late Night Book Club chats.
It’s a peach of a show, like the best four day match, it subtly changes and evolves. Taking you to some unexpected places but held within a perfect format, old favourites will often confirm their worth. Importantly though, that sprightly enthusiastic newcomer could end up with the decisive contribution.
Thanks to Gideon for taking the time to complete the questions that I emailed to him. I’m sure that you will enjoy his answers.
Thanks also to the wonderful https://ian38018.blogspot.com/ for letting me use his picture of the Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence in Canterbury. If you have any interest is sports stadiums be they large or small, you really should visit his incredible site.
Thanks for doing this Gid, what are your earliest memories of cricket?
I was born in 1967 so, growing up in the 70s I became aware of cricket via the TV. Just the 3 channels and one of them would show cricket from time to time when I was off ill or at home bored. At first I didn’t really know what was going on and I was convinced that the ball was delivered in a wheeling windwmill action not unlike Mick Channon’s Goal Celebration but my older brother soon put me right on that. I was also slightly unnerved by the white clothing. To me, they looked like butchers
Did you play cricket as a child. And if so, how did it go? Did you then go on and play as an adult?
We played garden cricket every summer and, quite often, well into the autumn. I’m one of four brothers and we were lucky enough to grow up with a decent sized back garden. At one house the garden path was the wicket. Pacey but with a true bounce. When we moved it was a grass wicket at the very end of a long garden. Lot of movement. Especially when it got wet. I was never very good. I played at school and managed to get into a very talented school team as regular number 9/10 dogged bat and specialist square-leg fielder. I bowled one spell and took a wicket with looping full toss with my first ball. The rest of the team were really good. We won the district cup one year and medals were handed out by E W Swanton. I was out first ball though I managed to stop one or two at square leg. Didn’t play as a adult. Except for with my brothers. We still play at the end my mum and step dad’s garden when we’re there together. Very slow bowling
Was there a family member or friend that particular encouraged your interest in cricket?
Aside from my older brother Simon, who is pretty good and still played for senior sides into his fifties, there was my dad and his father, George. And my step-dad loves cricket and can bowl decent googlies. Then there was my mum’s Dad Frank who, in his later years worked on the gate at the St Lawrence Ground Canterbury. Might return to that in a bit.
As someone who has become a broadcaster, were there any voices on either Radio or TV that helped to develop your love of the game and broadcasting?
I was lucky enough to catch the last few years of John Arlott as part of the TMS team. So, alongside Don Mosey, Henry Blofeld, Brian Johnston, Fred Truman and Trevor Bailey those are the voices I remember. And Alan McGilvray for Ashes Tests. That began the love affair with TMS. And on TV it was Jim Laker and Richie Benaud. All Great voice. Richie the greatest of them all
Was there a particular game or series that cemented your love of cricket?
I was aware of England toiling in the 75 home series with Australia and definitely watched, and was in awe of, the West Indies in 76. That started a lifetime of wanting them to win everything. The first series that I remember watching almost from start to finish was the 77 Ashes series. The return of Boycott. The Running out of Randall. Botham’s debut series. Graeme Roope’s Hair. That and some proper Aussies in the touring party. Doug Walters (didn’t get many), Rod Marsh, Max Walker etc. David Hookes looked good for a few and then got out playing across the line. I could go on. And it ended with Randall taking the winning catch which seemed about right. Loved that series.
Did you go and watch County Cricket or Test Match games as a child? If so do you remember your first match?
Didn’t see a test until much later. Possibly for work now I think about it. Saw plenty of county cricket though. Mainly at The St Lawrence Ground Canterbury. Let me briefly explain. I was born in Canterbury and then, when I was three, we moved to Bristol where we stayed for ten years. In this time out holidays were spent in. .. Canterbury. Where, for reasons best known to themselves, both sets of Grandparents lived next door to each other. Magical for us kids even though the grandparents were quite often not on speaking terms. Anyway, the summer visit would coincide with Cricket Week at Canterbury and my Grandad Frank would get us in. He worked on the Nackington Road gate with several fellow-gents of a similar age. Probably all WWI veterans now I think about it. It was a lovely job for him. And for passing school kids who could get in without him and his colleagues noticing. Especially after lunch. So, I was there a fair bit and when we moved back to Canterbury (1980) I continued to go a lot. Into adulthood. We’d sometimes nip up there after some lunchtime drinks in town. I remember one time we went there for a Sunday League game with Middlesex. Besides the cricket, the main aim was to boo Mike Gatting who had just led a rebel tour to South Africa. We booed him. He didn’t notice. Fair enough. Job done.
Which players particularly caught your attention as a youngster? Were you able to see them play in the flesh?
Kent players such as Asif Iqbal, Alan Knott and Derek Underwood. Definitely saw them a few times. Looking back, to see Knott keeping wicket to Deadly Derek is quite something to have witnessed. And the great Gloucestershire side of the late 70s too. They came to Canterbury and Zaheer got loads of runs. Hit one six which seemed to go for miles. I think he and Sadiq Mohammed batted for much of that day. So I don’t think I ever saw Mike Proctor bowl. I did try bowling off the wrong foot like him but sadly it didn’t result in unplayable yorkers.
As you grew older, did you (do you) go to watch games? From my experience, it got harder to find the time, and radio in particular was my link to the game. How about you?
I try to see at least one full day each summer. Usually at Lords on Day 2 or 3 of a four dayer. Sadly this year I failed to do even that. I also pop up to see my local side South Hampstead from time to time. Other than that, it’s all radio and my favourite part of radio/online is the BBCs coverage of the 4 day county games. Brilliantly done. Wonderful company. Proper cricket
Is cricket watching/listening a shared experience for you, or something that gives you a space of your own for a while.
Very much space of my own when it comes to listening. It’s ideal for that. And my rare trips to see it in the flesh are also solo affairs. It’s escapism of the very best kind
Have you ever watched a game overseas?
Yes, just the once. Went to WACA to see a Big Bash match a few years back. Very enjoyable. Lovely ground too. Though somehow the beer van ran out of essentials.
Any favourite cricket writers or books on cricket?
I’ve got a collection of Arlott’s writing somewhere but I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s great though and he wrote beautifully about the game. Beyond the Boundary by CLR James is rightly revered as one of the greatest cricket books and I really like Duncan Hamilton’s biography of Harold Larwood. There’s also one of my step-dad’s books which I appear to have nicked. Great Cricket Matches – edited by Handasyde Buchanan. Published in 1962. Ends with the tied test in Brisbane. Wonderful stuff.
As someone who lived near the County Ground in Bristol but moved away at a young age, do you have a fondness for any particular County team?
It’s Kent. My brother Simon went over to Gloucestershire but I never did. I’m not that bothered about England one way or the other but I’m still very much a Kent Supporter.
After Gid sent me his answers, I had a route around in my Glos yearbooks and found the score card for the Kent V. Glos game from 1976 that he mentions. The mighty Zaheer Abbas did indeed get a load of runs that day.I sent him the picture below to check that it was the right match.
Ha, that’s the one. And as a footnote, I clearly remember my Grandad coming home on the final day. He’d come home early because he’d be on an earlier shift that day and there was no ticketing after tea. He said to us “It’ll be a draw.” He clearly hadn’t reckoned on the visitors scoring at a ridiculous five an over. Thanks for this. Simon and I watched ZA go about young KBS Jarvis from our vantage point in the top of the Frank Woolley stand. Remember it very clearly. Blimey.
What lovely memories, lets hope Gid can get along to watch some cricket in the flesh again next season.
To keep this blog active, during the long cricket drought, I thought it would be fun to chat to some other cricket fans and publish the interviews here. These interviews won’t be hard hitting debates on the future of the game. There won’t be huge debates on the number of games in a season. We won’t set the Duke against the Kookaburra. We won’t even debate the lack of a really good shop at the ground here in Bristol. No, the aim is to showcase what drew us to the game and how the love for it has influenced us.
Some of the people will be old friends, who have gone on to be successful in their chosen fields. Others will be people whose paths I have been happy to cross at a later stage in life. All of them are bound to the great game, therefore to me, and indeed to you. We share the irresistible urge to watch some people playing a gorgeously complex game, often in very inappropriate weather.
My first guest is Bristol journalist Mark Taylor. For longer than I can remember Mark has been writing about food and drink. Covering the South West in general, and Bristol in particular but being the game chap that he is, he has ben known to travel anywhere in the country for a (hopefully) good meal. His honest reviews hit the sweet spot of being informative and enthusiastic but also honest and fair, to both proprietor and customer.
In addition to that Mark has also written about music for many years. He was the creator of the famous “Smith Indeed” fanzine, which ran from 1986-89 was recently reissued as a limited edition boxed set. He has also contributed countless live reviews, indeed I once inadvertently (and namelessly) appeared in one, as my gentle mid-gig correction to the wonderful Sufjan Stevens during a gig in Bristol snuck into his review.
As well the Bristol print and digital media, his work has appeared in the likes of The Sunday Times, Guardian, Financial Times and many more. He was also the founding editor of Both Fork Magazine and Crumbs.
Mark is a very busy chap, so I was thrilled when agreed to answer some questions for this blog. I emailed him the questions below, and being fine journalist that he is, the answers below were soon back in my inbox.
There are some lovely memories in answers, memories that will surely strike a chord for many of a similar age. Mark kindly sent me some his photos from those long summer days of the past, which I am happy to include here. I have also added the scorecards of the West Indies and Australia games that he mentions.
Thank you Mark.
What are your earliest memories of cricket?
Watching the four-day Gloucestershire game against the West Indies touring side at Bristol in the baking sun of August 1976. I was only just seven years old and it was the first game I’d seen. I’d never seen anything like it. I was hooked from then. We also used to watch the brilliant annual Somerset festival at Weston-super-Mare’s Clarence Park – I saw some great games there, including Boycott’s century in the 1982 match between Somerset and Yorkshire.
Did you play cricket as a child. And if so, how did it go?Did you then go on and play as an adult?
Yes, I spent every spare moment playing cricket in local parks from the age of about eight and I did play for my school. I was a much better bowler than batsman, a medium-pace left armer with a bit of spin – my dad always thought I was going to be the next Derek Underwood. I was actually a better slip catcher than anything else – my dad still talks about a brilliant slip catch I took on the hallowed ground at Clifton College. If only it had been captured on film! I didn’t play much beyond school other than a few games for the newspaper, although those tended to be more of a piss-up with a few overs rather than serious matches!
Was there a family member or friend that particular encouraged your interest in cricket?
Although my dad has always been more of a football fan than cricket, he grew up quite close to the County Ground so had seen a few matches in the 60s and early 70s so always talked about people like local hero Arthur Milton.
As someone who has become a successful journalist, where there any sports writers that helped to develop your love of the game and journalism?
At the time, I was devouring monthly magazines like Wisden and The Cricketer but as I got older, and became a journalist myself, I read a lot of cricket journalism. Obviously, I read the masters like EW Swanton and John Arlott but later on, it was people like Frank Keating, Ian Wooldridge, John Woodcock and the brilliant Bristol-based writer Alan Gibson.
Was there a particular game or series that cemented your love of cricket?
Although I saw the West Indies in 1976, I think it was the 1977 Australian series that really ignited it for me (and I saw them at close quarters in Bristol that summer). That said, the 1980 West Indies series with that ferocious bowling still sticks in the memory, that was a fantastic battle.
Did you go and watch County Cricket or Test Match games as a child?If so do you remember your first match?
After seeing the 1976 West Indies game at Bristol, my dad bought us season tickets so I spent as much time as possible at the County Ground. We lived a short walk away so it became a second home and we got to know the players pretty well. I probably saw most home games from 1977 to 1982.
Which players particularly caught your attention as a youngster?Were you able to see them play in the flesh?
I was so lucky to see all the great players from the late 70s and 80s when they played the County Ground. When you’re a cricket-obsessed schoolboy, to see (and meet) touring sides with players like Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Andy Roberts, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee, Dennis Lillee and Sunil Gavaskar, it leaves an indelible mark. I also collected autographs so managed to get most players from 1977-1982 to sign various books and photos. I still have them. The thing is, there was no security in those days other than a few old boys in white coats who were often asleep by mid-afternoon. We used to have total access to the players and would often climb the steps to the balcony at the top of the pavilion and meet the players, some of them were padded up waiting to bat next. It wasn’t unusual for some of the big name players to warm up on the outfield before a game and get the kids to bowl to them – I remember throwing a few down to Gordon Greenidge and Malcolm Marshall when I was about 11 years old. They were very approachable and always gave their time to the kids who idolised them.
As you grew older, did you (do you) go to watch games? From my experience, it got harder to find the time, and radio in particular was my link to the game. How about you?
Yes, I totally agree. Once I got to senior school, I was getting more into music and seeing bands than watching cricket, through lack of time more than anything. Test Match Special then became the main link for me – I can still hear the voices of Blowers, Johnners, CMJ, The Alderman, ‘Boil’ and Fiery Fred. Wonderful. As a kid, I also watched every ball of the test matches on the TV, often keeping meticulous scorecards myself.
Is cricket watching/listening a shared experience for you, or something that gives you a space of your own for a while.
Apart from those early matches with my dad, it’s always a solo indulgence. The thought of a long day watching a game with a regular top up of liquid refreshment – either tea from a flask or a cold pint – and a newspaper or book for the intervals is the stuff of dreams and I certainly wouldn’t want it spoiled by somebody chatting through it!
Have you ever watched a game overseas?
No, but it’s on the bucket list.
Any favourite cricket writers or books on cricket?
There are so many great cricket writers. As a journalist myself, I appreciate the art of sports writing more than most specialisms, particularly cricket, and we are lucky that there have been so many great wordsmiths. I used to pore over match reports from Henry Blofeld, CMJ, Alan Gibson, Scyld Berry, David Foot, David Green, Frank Keating and Martin Johnson. All great writers. I have amassed quite a collection of cricket books, mostly columns by journalists rather than biographies of players. Favourites include ‘Of Didcot and The Demon’ by Alan Gibson, ‘Can’t Bat, Can’t Bowl, Can’t Field’ by Martin Johnson and, more recently, Scyld Berry’s ‘Beyond The Boundaries: Travels on England Cricket Tours’. The list is endless.
Would you class yourself as a Gloucestershire supporter, Somerset supporter of a general fan of the game?
Although I saw Somerset play quite a bit early on, it was always Gloucestershire as I’ve tended to always live within walking distance of the ground. I was always aware of the deep and respected history of the club in the wider game with players like WG Grace, Jessop, Parker, Milton and Hammond, that always appealed to me too.
Any favourite players over the years?
Gloucestershire has had so many great players and characters. When I started to watch them, I was lucky to see legends like Mike Procter, Zaheer and Sadiq Mohammad most weeks. And then we had local heroes like Jack Russell, David Lawrence, the Stovold brothers and, of course, Andy Brassington, who was a great keeper, a lovely man and still a great ambassador for the club.
Do you have a favourite format of the game? Are you a day two of a four day game person, or prefer the get it done in a day approach (I enjoy both approaches though have not embraced the 100).
It has always been the five-day test match and four-day county game for me, I don’t like short games. I’m not remotely interested in T20 or the 100, or any cricket played with a ball that’s not red. That said, I used to love the John Player League Sunday games (40 overs each), which they used to show live on TV. I have fond memories of watching those tense finishes, often played on pitches with long shadows in the late afternoon sun. Wonderful stuff.
Rain Stopped Play, inspection at 3 