M Nicholas: Maestro unable to camouflage domestic issues (20 Jul 1998)

20 July 1998

Maestro unable to camouflage domestic issues

By Mark Nicholas

BARRY RICHARDS was my great cricketing hero and Vivian Richards was the best batsman that I was lucky enough, or unlucky enough you might say, to play against. I will wager, though, that my favourite "modern", Sachin Tendulkar, is as gifted as both and equally impossible to contain.

Tendulkar is indisputably the finest of the present time and among the very finest of all time, and it was quite exhilarating to see him on Saturday's sunlit stage at Lord's - and barely less of a treat, incidentally, to see Aravinda de Silva - flaying some pretty decent bowling to all parts.

Tendulkar uses a very heavy bat which has a thick handle for those trademark punches down the ground he plays equally smoothly from front and back foot. You would think this bat might deny him the more subtle angles and delicate deflections given to cricketers from the subcontinent but it does not; he can play those, too, if he chooses. Rather as a golf club appears to be moulded to Severiano Ballesteros as an extension of his arms, so the cricket bat appears to be a part of Tendulkar and the wand for the expression of his magic.

Some high-falutin' things have been said about this special fellow from Bombay, not least by Shane Warne when Tendulkar was having his purple patch against the Australians last winter.

Warne said that he was glad not to have bowled to Sir Donald Bradman if Bradman really was much better than this. Sir Donald himself had trumped Warne's remarks by saying that his late wife, Lady Jessie, had called him to the television one day because she thought that Tendulkar had the same style of play as her husband. Sir Donald watched closely and then said that he agreed.

It was a self-indulgent week for cricket watching, what with Tendulkar's princely performance and Hampshire's lordly - "Oh Lord, we've just sneaked home" - one wicket win over Warwickshire under floodlights at Edgbaston.

Night cricket does have something, no doubt about it. The weather was cold and dull and it was a low scoring match but the atmosphere was good, excitable rather than rowdy, and the cricket intense enough to fascinate a crowd of more than 8,000.

The contrasts are part of the show -darkness focusing attention on the floodlit arena, which increases drama; white ball, black sky; coloured clothes invading a traditional theme; the seamless transition from day through evening into night - as is the novelty, of course, which cricket needs if it is to thrive again.

There is novelty at Taunton later next week when Somerset and Gloucester get stuck into Cricket Max, or Super Max Cricket as it is re-christened now that Martin Crowe's original game is merging with Australia's super 8s. The game starts at 5pm on Friday week and if you have not seen Max yet and you are anywhere near the county ground in Taunton, pop in and take a look.

It is a little different from cricket as we know it and is fun and fast - 3.5 hours total time for an 11 a-side two innings' game with special zones for double runs.

Cricket does need a new angle to attract children who are otherwise attracted elsewhere. If the occasion goes well and, importantly, if the players enjoy themselves, Max must be worth consideration in the new structure for cricket that everyone is talking about.

To a degree, the structure will depend on the requirements of television, assuming the English Cricket Board want to make the most of de-listing, but mainly on the board's ability to look into the future and find a place for cricket through the next quarter of a century.

Reorganisation of existing structures is a tricky thing and, as Christopher Martin-Jenkins pointed out recently in these pages, much has changed in the structure of county cricket during the past quarter of a century.

David Morgan, who is chairman of the first class forum, has written me a straight letter responding to my thoughts last week on the one-day game in general and I apologise to him for believing that the National League is to be played over 25 matches per county. I found this figure in Wisden and in Raising The Standard but it has since changed apparently to 16 matches per county, so I got it wrong.

Mr Morgan and I don't much agree on "overkill" but since I am closely involved in the development of Hampshire's potentially smashing new ground in Southampton, my ideas are certainly not designed to deprive the spectator.

At the moment, the National League is in two divisions of nine teams. What about making them two conferences, playing just eight games - ie playing each other once - and having semi-finals and a final in early July?

This would create some space for a Super Max Cricket "Evening League" played between 5 o'clock and 10 o'clock (floodlights or not) which could be scheduled through the second half of July, August and early September when the weather is at its most reliable, the evening light bright and warm and, wait for it. . . the schools are on holiday.

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