CMJ: Cast off those flannels because here comes the night (3 Aug 1998)

3 August 1998

Cast off those flannels because here comes the night

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

Are you going to the big event tonight, the Surrey v Sussex floodlit match at the Oval? If you live near enough and have read a recent article by Victoria Coren in the Tatler - let alone Surrey's publicity - you may find it hard to resist. It may have escaped your notice but you should be aware that "cricket has thrown off its sad old flannels and reinvented itself for 1998 as a sexy game played by beautiful people ... Many matches are now being played at night, which means that cricket grounds are destined to become the dating venues of the summer, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

"With the sudden influx of handsome England players - Adam and Ben Hollioake, Mark Ramprakash, Nasser Hussain and Old Etonian all-rounder Matthew Fleming - cricket pavilions are being besieged by young women desperate for a glimpse of the new sex symbols, while less-competitive cricketing dates are attracting a growing band of aficionados. For heaven's sake, Jemima Goldsmith married a cricketer: how big a hint do you need?"

Getting slightly confused, perhaps, between white and coloured, day and night, our bubbly informant quotes the actress Shobah Ronay relating a recent experience watching cricket on Kew Green. "The men were all in white and the sun was out. It was so beautiful and timeless ..."

Miss Coren warms to her theme: "The fact that cricket is so much more civilised than football has been crucial to its resurgence ... What is more, cricket is in the grip of night fever ... Football was the popular game that tried to go upmarket; cricket is the upmarket game that the pukka pundits are flocking back to.

No less an authority than Benjie Fry, great-grandson of C B (who played cricket and football for England) advises by now intrigued Tatler readers: "Chicks dig cricketers because they have realised that they are gentlemen whereas footballers are boring yobs ... And, of course, chicks dig men in white."

It is a shame they will not be in white tonight because those familiar authorities Jilly Cooper and Frances Edmonds put the emphasis on traditional garb and Mrs Edmonds stresses the "pulling power of blokes in white".

The no less quotable Mrs Cooper, moving back to her first love from polo and show-jumping, assures us: "Cricket is glamorous and internecine, with lots of money about. And on tour they all behave terribly badly."

After that revelation, Miss Coren warns those intending to go to the Oval for the floodlit spectacular to discover at least a working knowledge of cricket. According to one Penny Govett: "It's terribly important for someone to tell you the rules; otherwise, it's incredibly dull."

Laws, actually, not rules. But perhaps one should resist the temptation to be pedantic if a new generation of pretty young socialites really does believe, in the words of the headlines to this enlightening piece, that: "Cricket is the new football. The introduction of evening games, star-studded matches and a new generation of heart-throb players has brought sex to the wicket. The crusty old business of bat and ball is now a joy to behold."

Frothy magazine-speak or not, I hope that many thousands go to the Oval to see for themselves. Floodlit cricket on a warm night genuinely is an exciting experience as often as not, although most of us know that limited-overs cricket, like a game of squash, can be dull if one side gets on top too early. Surrey's first attempt to stage one of these spectaculars last year was ruined by rain but they are hoping for a six-figure profit from their two floodlit games over the next three days.

I hope Merv Kitchen did not literally mean that he has umpired his last Test match when he spoke in disappointment at his own performance in the immediate aftermath of the fourth Test. He is a good man and a good umpire as well as being honest and he should remember all the decisions he got right, not the one or two he did not. He should be aware, too, that the camera can sometimes deceive.

That said, there may be an answer to the technology which has undermined the position of umpires in televised matches: namely, technology itself. Would it not be possible for the umpire to carry a television monitor - not much larger than a wristwatch, but sufficiently clear - so that when he is in doubt he can himself look at the replays before making his own decision? Alternatively, recourse to the screen seen by the crowd, now remarkably clear, might be preferable to the controversy which follows slow-motion replays of umpiring misjudgments. In either case, however, be warned: the game will be even more prone to dramatic pauses and 90 overs would take nearer seven hours than six.

Much the best solution, of course, would be a conference of the captains and coaches of all professional cricketers (the amateurs would soon follow) leading to an agreement that batsmen who know they have touched the ball and been caught will walk and that appeals will only be made when there is a genuine conviction that someone might be out.

The Trent Bridge Test did no harm to the cause but deliberate bowling outside the off stump by South Africa, a policy consistently applied at various stages of Test matches since the alliance of Bob Woolmer as coach and Hansie Cronje as captain, was not the game's most attractive feature. It leads almost inevitably to dull cricket. Wars of attrition might have been acceptable in a more patient age but there is a case for a stricter interpretation of a wide ball as an experimental International Cricket Council directive with a view to possible inclusion in the laws currently being revised by MCC.

It would be well worth monitoring the effect of two white lines going back from the popping crease, say a foot-and-a-half outside the leg stump, two feet outside the off. Needless to say, to be fair to bowlers, the umpires would have to make their judgement on the width of the ball at the time it passed the batsman, to allow for movement, but it was always the intention of the game for bowlers to aim at the stumps and continuous wide deliveries are no different from continuous short-pitched balls in the sense that both forms of "attack" are usually negative. The batsman must either leave the ball alone or take a gamble with the odds seldom in his favour.

On the other hand, of course, wide balls can always be driven or cut, and short ones hooked. One would certainly not advocate this as anything more than an experiment at this stage. The fact that Andrew Flintoff fell into the trap at Trent Bridge by chasing a very wide ball was due partly, no doubt, to the natural inhibition any batsman must feel in his first Test innings. Perhaps in a county match he would have got further across and hammered it through the covers.

Nevertheless, in Tests, where caution tends to prevail, the tactic of bowling wide to a well-protected off-side field, first employed regularly by the West Indies, has the significant effect not just of drying up opposition runs but of making the cricket boring for spectators. That is something which, in an age of fierce competition with other sports, surely has to be considered.

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