Nicholas Hogg
The first ball of the season
Why a ton of history, dating back to childhood games in the backyard, is necessarily tied up with thoughts about the beginning of the cricket season
Nicholas Hogg
02-May-2014
Next weekend - weather permitting - I shall bowl my first ball of the season. A simple act, surely, after nearly 30 years of running up to the wicket, taking aim and getting it to the other end - sometimes without the batsman stopping its progress.
Alas, it's not quite as simple as that. And while I mostly blame age for complicating the act, it's hardly ever been a direct process. So before I release that red projectile on Sunday, I should acknowledge the many battles fought to allow that five-and-a-half ounce sphere of dye and stitching to (hopefully) start just outside leg stump, swing late, pitch around middle and veer off the seam to hit the top of off stump. Only when the bails fly is the battle over - until the next batsman gets to crease.
Firstly, the human body is not constructed to hurl an object with a straight arm. We have an elbow for a reason, but not, as the rule-makers decreed, for bowling a cricket ball.
Full postFrom hockey sticks to whalebone
Bat-making as a craft has undergone revolutionary changes and then some since the days of Hambledon
Nicholas Hogg
20-Apr-2014
Clubs for hitting things may have been around for millennia, but it wasn't until a news item in Read's Weekly Journal of 17 August 1723 that it was confirmed a cricket bat could be bought rather than whittled from a trunk by the batsman himself: "There was lately imported hither a great number of Batts and other utensils for Cricket-playing."
Although the article is thought to be a spoof on the exiled Prince of Wales lounging about in Rome, playing cricket in the palace gardens, rather than ruling at home, Hugh Barty-King, writing in Quilt Winders and Pod Shavers - The History of Cricket Bat and Ball Manufacture, argues it is evidence for the birth of the bat industry.
The oldest bat thought to be in existence resides at The Oval. The 1729 relic looks more like a hockey stick than a modern blade. Other surviving bats of this era resemble mammoth clubs cut from either ash or alder, and also possess the curved toe essential for lifting the underarm pea-rollers of the day.
Full postThe golden land of pre-season
It's that time of year when you dust your kit and conveniently forget how the last season went
Nicholas Hogg
03-Apr-2014
We are here. Finally. After the winter of our cricketing discontent, it is the English pre-season, a golden land of hope and optimism.
Okay, I'm writing this the day after the English rose wilted before the Dutch tulip, but the sky is blue, and for most club cricketers, nets have just started. We have burrowed through a long, dark winter to emerge blinking in the sunlight above the square.
First, there was the post-season, with its injury-healing properties, along with the repairs to any romance that hasn't been mortally wounded by 16 consecutive Saturdays of apologies to our partners about that weekend away, is a restorative period.
Full postAnger isn't all bad
Ben Stokes may have broken his wrist by punching a locker door in anger, but that's much the same emotion he needs to channel at the top of his run-up
Nicholas Hogg
21-Mar-2014
"And the locker door downs the firebrand Englishman, Ben 'The Durham Destroyer' Stokes, on a technical knockout, with the redheaded allrounder forced to retire from both the Battle of the Dressing Room and the World T20 with a fractured scaphoid. What a punch!"
The becalmed batsmen who never even swear in anger, let alone assault inanimate objects, might trouble to understand the mindset of a man who punches things. To the well-adjusted the temper tantrum is something of an enigma. And even if you acknowledge that Stokes' run of poor scores had ratcheted up the tension, you might not empathise with his need to violently snap.
As a player whose bat occasionally arrives at the pavilion before he does, I admit to a series of PDFs (Public Displays of Frustration) when cosmic justice is awry - that absolutely plumb lbw decision not given, or, for the second week running, I've been caught behind off my pad. If the surge of adrenaline is too much for my body to hold then a physical act is required to release the pressure, and the subsequent guilt/embarrassment of bat-slinging, cap-throwing, ball-kicking is usually enough to douse the fire.
Full postWho cares about bats anyway?
We don't think much about our bats, do we? No, not much at all
Nicholas Hogg
07-Mar-2014
Long before the game of cricket, before we stood about in fields hunting wickets, we spent the afternoons carrying wooden clubs, stalking woolly mammoths. One could argue that our natural state is to be armed. And therefore it's no surprise that grown men will invest time and money, and indulge in endless and ill-informed conversations with other grown men about the weight distribution of certain bat designs, the latest innovation that will revolutionise our game, and then retire to our shed/garage/bedroom and run our finger along a cleft of willow.
Such is the importance of buying a new blade that it can provide a seminal father-son bonding experience - especially that magical "first bat". Son might be driven out to the sports shop by father on a spring morning, perhaps a day after news about a stirring England win overseas, or a school letter about team whites, or the constant pleading of little Jonny, who is savvy enough to mention to dad that his best friend, who also plays for the county team, has just been bought a new bat by his dad, who also happens to drive a sleeker car than little Jonny's father.
But anyway, it's not a case of keeping up with the Joneses. Little Jonny's father has memories of his own father buying him a bat, when edges were edges and not middles, and the maker's name was a moniker of history and resonance, rather than a garish badge with the name of a machine gun, sword, or Viking god's mythical hammer.
Full postWhat's the best job in cricket?
Streaker guard? Grass cutter? Bat maker? Or a sushi-eating cricket missionary?
Nicholas Hogg
21-Feb-2014
My job was to catch naked people at Lord's. Sitting on a bench before the egg-and-bacon ties of the members stand, donning a green MCC tracksuit rather than the geeky steward vest, I had the best view in the home of cricket. It was a shame that Shaun Pollock was destroying England, and that I was partnered with a wisecracking South African as my fellow "streaker guard". It was also disappointing that I didn't get to rugby-tackle a drunken nudist - not a sentence I ever expected to write.
However, who would complain about being compensated to watch Test cricket? Okay, the peanuts wage was 30 quid a day, and if I had been one of the stewards in the hi-vis bibs who were forbidden to even look at the match I might have whipped off my uniform and slipped in with the fans. But I was one of the lucky ones, a punter who was paid to be part of a sport he once dreamt of being a professional in. And streaker guard was more glamorous than my first job in cricket as a teenage groundsman.
While scything outfields with a strimmer I would daydream of the innings I was going to play for England. If not cutting grass or creosoting fencing, oiling the roller or hunting moles at dawn with a shovel - thankfully they never surfaced while I was on watch, as I doubt I would have been merciless enough to plonk one on the head as they dug up the square - I'd take the ball I'd packed in my rucksack and bowl at a single stump in the vacant nets. When I worked with my team-mate, Rich, another cricket-mad boy with dreams of glory, we'd wait for the boss to clear off and bat with whatever length of wood we could find. On the days we were driven into the sticks and marooned clearing weeds at an overgrown cemetery, the long afternoons were punctuated by work, rather than work punctuated by cricket.
Still, sneaking off work to whack a ball isn't really a cricket job. Not like the proper non-playing careers in coaching, scoring, umpiring and commentating.
Full postWhen a six is not enough
How long before the mighty heave that clears the stadium is awarded more than half a dozen runs?
Nicholas Hogg
22-Jan-2014
It's an innate human quality to create sport. Prehistoric cave paintings depict early versions of wrestling, sprinting and archery. Games that evolved from crude contests of speed and strength now fill stadiums and generate billions of pounds, dollars and rupees in TV revenue and gate receipts.
Although cricket has come a long way from the overdressed and overfed gents rolling potato-shaped balls between gates defended by curved bats, we still love to debate its changes and its future. But whatever form cricket does take, and whatever complaints are made by the purists - despite "pure" being a misnomer in a game that has never been out of flux - there's always an improvised version of the norm in play. Whether it be a frenetic tape-ball game on an Indian street, the non-stop rallies played in school sports halls, or French cricket in the back garden, there is an inherent joy in hitting an spherical object with a length of wood.
Long before I ventured into the formal arena of a cut and watered wicket, stepping over a boundary rope that required me to wear whites and comply with umpires and ratified laws, I played most of my cricket on the side street of a scruffy industrial estate in the East Midlands. Bowling at a set of stumps graffitied onto a factory wall in black marker pen, and spanking a tennis ball with a splintered bat, I played for hours with friends at weekends when the machine floors silenced and we wouldn't be chased away by irate workers worried about their windows. While most English cricketers hibernated through the dark winter we played out an endless summer as the yellow streetlights gave off just enough illumination to see that incoming rubber delivery.
Full postA Christmas wishlist
A genuine English fast bowler, application for KP, a time machine for Sreesanth, and other humble requests
Nicholas Hogg
24-Dec-2013
Dear Santa,
Hope all is well with you in the non-cricketing North Pole. Although I've never seen you with a bat in your hand - well, apart from on novelty Christmas cards given to blokes who, like me, can't even manage one day of the year without thinking about cricket - I imagine the flawless landscape of the Arctic makes it easy to sight a red ball. You might have to ditch your Coca Cola-sponsored garb for a pair of flannels, but you can keep your white beard, as there is an illustrious history of bushy facial hair and cricket, and it's basically another sightscreen.
Anyway, just thought I'd pop you a few lines about what I want for Christmas, and as your all-seeing godlike CCTV presence knows, I've been a good boy this year. Well, at least on the cricket field, where I started the season by edging one to the keeper and walking, unlike other boys who are no doubt on your "Naughty List". I even apologised to a couple of batsmen after a bout of bowler's Tourette's - I was swearing at myself, not the men scoring runs. Honestly, I wasn't cursing at the guy who hit me for a back foot six over cover, or the other flukey slogger who I had dropped twice before he retired on 70 as if he were too good for the attack.
Full postTours from hell
Think it's gone all pear-shaped for England in Australia? Other teams have had it worse when playing away from home
Nicholas Hogg
19-Dec-2013
"The tour is only a matter of hours old... but the wry thought occurs to me that reputations will almost certainly be destroyed in the next few months."
So begins Geoff Boycott in his diary of the 1981 England tour of the West Indies, In the Fast Lane. Captained by a young Ian Botham, the Caribbean campaign quickly faltered. England followed on and lost the first Test by an innings, and the Guyanese government cancelled the second game when they revoked Robin Jackman's visa due to his connections with apartheid South Africa. When the series resumed Michael Holding bowled what many hail as The Greatest Ever Over at a hapless Boycott. Yet the Holding barrage was overshadowed by the tragic death of assistant tour manager Ken Barrington, who collapsed with a fatal heart attack that same evening at the team hotel.
Injuries, personal tragedy, politics and personal animosity. And here we are in Australia at the end of 2013. England 3-0 and the Ashes lost, with Stuart Broad hobbling and Jonathan Trott flown home, Graeme Swann and James Anderson wandering the trenches with shell shock, and Captain Cook fumbling through his orders. The cliché reverberating on the airwaves is: "the wheels have come off". Not only the wheels. The bonnet is flapping in the wind and smoke is pouring from the engine and the kids are fighting in the back seat and dad has lost the map.
Full postThe comeback
Just as Mitchell Johnson has risen from the ashes of cricket ignominy and ridicule, England need a new hero of the hour to inspire their fightback
Nicholas Hogg
04-Dec-2013
We love a comeback. We love to see the knocked-out boxer staggering to his feet, or the aged singer performing for one last night. Muhammad Ali got back into the ring after being exiled for refusing the draft, was floored by Joe Frazier, and then made yet another comeback to reclaim his title. Elvis Presley, after a seven-year absence from the stage, squeezed into a suit of black leather and resurrected himself to again rock the world.
Both stars made their names with roaring returns.
Now Mitchell Johnson has made a successful comeback, and Jonathan Trott has one ahead of him.
Full post