EW Swanton: Captains on the end of some ICC straight talk (20 May 1998)

Wednesday, May 20, 1998

Captains on the end of some ICC straight talk

By E.W. Swanton

THE cricket sub-committee of the International Cricket Council conclude a two-day session today, having digested among a variety of topical matters the outcome of the meeting of the captains of all the Test countries at Lord's on Monday. This is in preparation for the annual gathering of the delegates of every member country, great and small, which will spread over the second week of June, prior to the Lord's Test. We may be thankful that the council are making a much bigger impact on the game at top level since David Richards, of Australia, was set up as chief executive in his clock-tower office at Lord's.

The Test captains' meeting was very much a two-way affair. The ICC will have sought their views on such immediate concerns as the proliferation of Test matches and the consequent strain on players, and the suitability or otherwise of Test grounds and of referees. The captains will also have been on the receiving end of some straight talking on the undue pressure placed on umpires and other serious lapses from acceptable behaviour in these days when nothing escapes the probing eye of television.

As to the coming exchanges between England and South Africa, which begin at the Oval tomorrow, the feelings of all present at MCC's dinner for the South Africans were reflected in a prolonged ovation following Hansie Cronje's speech. Fine sentiments at the outset do not always survive the fire of battle, so I will merely record this as the most articulate and admirable effort I have heard from a captain since J M Brearley exchanged leadership on the field for the psychiatrist's chair.

South Africa 1998 will be a tough side to beat: England's new captain, Alec Stewart, and his one-day counterpart, Adam Hollioake, have been thoroughly briefed, I am assured, by the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board in all the aspects of their jobs. May good luck attend them!

TO HAVE been watching the game in recent sunlit days at Oxford and Canterbury has been euphoric. Michael Atherton's 152 was a bonus of one sort, Carl Hooper's classic 203 of another sort. In the Oxford Parks, Matthew Fleming made a free and forceful hundred and a couple of days later was expressing himself with comparable emphasis in his capacity as chairman of the Professional Cricketers' Association. Like the ICC, the PCA, with Fleming in the chair and David Graveney as chief executive, are beginning to raise their voice and they deserve to be heard with sympathetic attention. It must surely be reasonable, for instance, to plead for a working share of the ECB's annual profit which the efforts of the association's members have engendered.

When it comes to calling for a two-divisional championship and the virtual elimination of the registration system, it must, however, be recognised that the players have a strong vested interest. Broadly, many think these radical notions would result in their being paid more for playing less. I happen to believe that it is only the current England cricketers who should be relieved of some of the one-day burden, and that any diminution of championship matches would be deplorable. Brian Statham, president of Lancashire, may have had his tongue only slightly in his cheek when he said that more matches were wanted, not fewer.

As to two divisions, I have underlined more than once - and may well do so at length again, along with a fairer alternative - the basic objections which caused the First-class Forum to reject the proposition by 12 votes to seven.

WHAT, I ask, has been the outstanding 'record' of the past winter? Surely, by a comfortable margin, it was the sales of Dickie Bird's My Autobiography. The figure (so Hodder & Stoughton tell me) is 310,000 with a 22nd printing in hand and a paperback edition to come. It has been on the bestseller list for 31 weeks, having reached a sale I suppose never approached by a cricket book.

How can it be accounted for? Well, it is the everyday tale of the boy from a mining environment who has made good. He remains a regular church-goer, never having swerved from the Christian principles of his parents. His story is utterly benevolent and in parts humorous, full of gratitude to all concerned. He has umpired world-wide and made friends everywhere. When it came to his last Test at Lord's last year, the publicity surrounding the occasion, over-sentimentalised to some tastes, evidently struck a chord still echoing many months later. His reactions are orthodox, thoroughly conventional. He deplores misbehaviour on the field and has his own personal way of dealing with it. People empathise with his vulnerability.

Dickie's philosophy is at the other end of the spectrum from the over-aggressive, confrontational style practised by some leading players and advocated by some media people to whom the true spirit of cricket means less than nothing.

Talking of bestsellers, the 1998 Wisden has been high up on the hardback list, Playfair Cricket Annual equally so among the paperbacks: all further evidence of cricket's still strong hold on this country, shaken though it has been by England's falls from grace.

PS: From the 102-year-old mother of a reader deploring intimidatory fielding around the bat: in a school match at Burton-on-Trent when she was a girl, she writes: "I managed to catch a ball though fell in the process and the umpire said the ball had touched the ground, but I knew it hadn't. But one didn't argue with the umpire in those days, male or female. This would have been around 1910." And she still recalls it 88 years on.

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