CM Jenkins: Giddins issue casts long shadow over Lord's (19 Aug 1996)

A BUSY and important week for cricket starts at Lord`s today with the happy announcement that the Cricket Foundation are distributing #2.35 million to the Boards of various minor and major counties for youth development

19-Aug-1996

19 August 1996

Giddins issue casts long shadow over Lord`s

Cricket Comment by Christopher Martin-Jenkins

Unhappily, on this same day the Test and County Cricket Board`s discipline committee have to decide what to do with the Sussex fast bowler Ed Giddins, whose hopes of lenient treatment will hardly have been enhanced by last week`s Health Education Authority report that nearly half of all British 15 and 16-year-olds admit to experimenting with drugs.

No sooner will Giddins know his fate than the full Board will be gathering for their annual August meeting, to appoint Sir Ian MacLaurin in succession to Dennis Silk as their new chairman, to discuss the Acfield Report into the selection, coaching and management of the England team and to get un update on the progess towards a newly-constituted cricketing authority with a coherent national plan which satisfies the distributors of public money.

The meeting, at the futuristic glasshouse beside the Nursery ground which now houses Board officials, will be held to the background of applause and appeals from the final of the Lombard Under-15 World Cup in which Pakistan will play India, both countries having beaten England. And so to the Test match across the river on Thursday, the outcome of which will decide the grown-up series.

For those playing, administering and reporting pro- fessional cricket there is seldom a dull moment these days. It is a shame that so many important events should be coinciding at a time when the County Championship, the oldest of all the major tournaments and leagues around the world, is building towards its unpredictable climax, attracting good crowds and wide interest from the middle-aged who are too busy to watch, but anxious to read how matches are going. Was it really necessary for the Cricket Foundation awards to be announced today when some good matches, notably those at Derby and Canterbury, are to be decided?

Britannic Assurance should fire a warning shot across the Board`s bows over this. Fortunately, it will be a few weeks yet before one of the captains - Paul Prichard, Alec Stewart, Dean Jones, Mark Whitaker, Steve Marsh, Tim Munton, A N Other? - holds up the cheque for #65,000, much the largest yet, but still half as much as it should be. Today`s clash of events will cut the amount of space afforded in most newspapers to both the championship and the less dramatic, but ultimately very important, grants to the County Boards.

These donations have been made possible by the overdue acceptance by the counties of their responsibility to develop the game within their own borders. To make that possible, they agreed to forgo a portion of the annual handout of profits from international cricket and TV revenue and to hive it off instead into the Cricket Foundation, where their charity status ensures the money goes further.

For the young who aspire to the tough, but rewarding, life of a professional, today`s decision on Ed Giddins will obviously be important. The discipline committee`s duty is to be fair to a first offender, yet aware of their responsibility to see that those `role models` who send the wrong messages to the young are punished accordingly.

Counties have been obliged since then to bring to- gether the various interests of cricket groups within their sphere of influence - the county club itself, schools, clubs, umpires, women`s cricket etc - under one `County Board`. Applications were invited for a distribution of Foundation funds for youth development purposes and it will be interesting today to see how the first few slices of what should become a very large cake will be handed out. Most is expected to go towards the salaries of youth development officers for the regeneration of schools cricket.

Although it was pleasing to see England reach the semi-final of the Under-15 competition, what little I saw on television of their attempts to overhaul a Pakistan total of 208 was disappointing. No obvious Athertons or Thorpes, although those two, like most of the senior England side, played their fair share of English Schools Cricket Association matches on their way up the ladder.

Giddins is an unconventional fellow, which is not unwelcome in a circuit which often seems a bit short of colourful characters. He is not that old himself, just turned 25. Eastbourneborn and educated, he invariably seems cheerful. He bowls fast-medium, sometimes genuinely fast, getting hostile bounce from an action which owes much to his height, touching 6ft 5in.

His Sussex team-mates recognise his worth as a bowler but are sometimes uneasy about his resolutely independent private life. They were still as surprised as anyone when a routine urine sample taken during the match against Kent at Tunbridge Wells in late May revealed traces of what is believed to have been cocaine. Most parents will shudder at that, without understanding all the implications.

Taking cocaine is against the law, but police would normally not prosecute a first offence, merely direct the offender towards sound advice and away from the hideous consequences of addiction. I am told that taking cocaine could be performance enhancing only for a short while, after which it would be more likely to enfeeble the offender. There has been no suggestion that this was anything but a social offence and there will be those who say that it is nobody else`s business. The Board, however, are tied to the Sports Council when it comes to advising players on what medicines they can and cannot take and on testing procedures.

Today`s discipline panel, under Gerard Elias, QC, will be aware that Olympic guidelines recommend a two to four-year suspension for taking cocaine; but that Ian Botham was suspended only for two months when, in 1986, he admitted having smoked cannabis. Perhaps, as in the case of Richard Stemp, whose drink was spiked by amphetamines without his knowledge, there will be an innocent explanation.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)