CMJ: Comment: Unwelcome message embraced by grass roots (30 June 1997)

Monday 30 June 1997

Comment: Unwelcome message embraced by grass roots

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

AT the start of this season Gerard Elias, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board`s discipline committee, wrote a strong letter to the chief executive of every county warning that "our game" was in danger of becoming less attractive because its players are less disciplined.

He had in mind concerted appealing, dissent, and general demeanour on the field as well as social activities off it of the kind which led Warwickshire to carry out an unexpected drug testing of all their players last week.

Despite the unfortunate consequences of that event for Keith Piper, a number of recent instances suggest that the message may be getting home at the top too late to change the habits of at least the current generation of club and school cricketers. Unfortunately, it takes time for standards set in firstclass cricket to filter down to recreational levels, but in both the Test and county cricket which I have seen this year, old standards of sportsmanship seem to have turned back towards the standard once expected.

Jack Birkenshaw came away from Leicestershire`s championship match with Lancashire delighted that it had been played "in the right spirit". In the Tests and internationals batsmen have been seen to walk when they have thin-edged a ball to the wicketkeeper; Ian Healy admitted that he was not sure that he had caught Graham Thorpe cleanly (first ball, too, in an Ashes Test at Lord`s); century-makers have been clapped by the opposition; the appealing has been rather more realistic and they have even resisted going up in concert when a ball has turned off a pad into short leg`s hands. Surprise, surprise, this has helped the umpires, too. The standard has been good.

There is still much to be done to prove to the young that cricket can be aggressive and competitive without being nasty and underhand. The same Leicestershire side, I hear, got bad marks for their contemptuous attitude in a recent game against Cambridge and the captain of a county side in another match let forth a volley of abuse at a student bowler after he had been quite legitimately yorked: a case of vulgar invective serving no purpose whatsoever and demeaning to everyone. The umpires should have reported the captain, but either they did not hear or chose not to.

The poison spreads from the top to the bottom, which is why Elias was so right to urge the counties to set a better example. A few weeks ago the coach of a well known independent school, a hardened ex-professional himself, told me that he was appalled by the sledging going on in Saturday afternoon school matches. It has been a short step, it seems, from spurious encouragement of the bowlers by wicket-keepers and fielders to downright gamesmanship. Last Friday, too, a league cricketer from Essex who plays in Kent wrote to The Times claiming that the days are gone when club cricketers "played hard but honestly, and socialised with the opposition with a jug or two of beer".

They are not quite gone, actually. But it is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.

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THE rapacious doings of Australian cricketers in county cricket are frequently offered as a yardstick of the strength of the game Down Under. Stuart Law, Darren Lehmann, Matthew Hayden and Shaun Young provide almost daily reminders, and the likes of Ricky Ponting, Michael Slater, Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist could be forgiven for wondering how much better off they are as travelling reserves for a touring team who are 1-0 down in the Test series and plagued by rain.

For the first time for many years, however, to look at the latest first-class averages is not to despair about the domination of county cricket by men from overseas. A cricketer`s current average often gives more of an impression than a clear picture. It is true, too, that there is a relative shortage of world-class overseas players for counties to choose from now that the `winter` season has expanded.

Nevertheless, averages offer an indication of trends, if nothing else, and those published before the start of the present water-riven championship games give a slightly different perspective on the current strength of the two nations. Hayden is second, Lehmann ninth and Law 13th in the batting, but Paul Reiffel`s position at the top of the bowling list is possibly a little artificial after only 60 overs. What is encouraging is that 12 England-qualified bowlers have taken their wickets at under 20 each.

Perhaps the weather explains this: clouds always mean relatively easy wickets for faster bowlers. (In days of uncovered pitches, for spinners too). Still, bowling is the real gauge of a nation`s cricketing strength and after six successive seasons in which an overseas bowler has finished top of the national averages, perhaps this year will be different. The likes of Mike Smith and Jamie Hewitt are certainly keeping up at the moment with champions like Waqar Younis and Allan Donald who, with Wasim Akram, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose (twice) have headed the list since Neil Foster managed to do so in the hot summer of 1990.

It is premature to call this a bowlers` summer, but some of the batsmen are not doing badly either. Were Ed Smith of Cambridge University and, soon, Kent, a young Aussie, he would no doubt be the talk of the town for his 614 runs from nine firstclass innings at an average of 87 before the current match.

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A PARTING thought as Hong Kong ceases to be British. It is often claimed that cricket was one of the best of the lasting gifts bequeathed by the Empire to its colonies. As the International Cricket Council expand their horizons could Hong Kong, whose old cricket ground was once the most expensive piece of real estate in the world, not be the bridgehead for a serious attempt to take cricket to China? So far the game has only touched a tiny proportion of the most vast population on earth but, provided they were taught that the game is about sportsmanship as well as hitting a ball, they might be playing Test matches against the United States a hundred years from now.

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