Mark Nicholas: Over-egging the righteousness (18 August 1997)

Monday 18 August 1997

Over-egging the righteousness

Mark Nicholas Talking Cricket

THE other day somebody said that if you want English cricketers to get harder you have to expect incidents like the Ilott/Croft spec- tacular at Chelmsford last week. Ye Gods, what`s it all coming to? It`s brain we need, not brawn, if we are to support Lord MacLaurin in Raising the Standard; we need players who think on their feet, not fisticuffs and verbal volleys.

The adopted Queenslander, Stuart Law, was quoted as saying that the fury in last Tuesday`s NatWest semi-final was normal stuff back home in the Sheffield Shield. Well, I`ll bet Bradman wouldn`t want to hear that, nor Benaud, or Mark Taylor for that matter. I`ll also bet that, to a degree, Law was misquoted since it is more likely that he was referring to his own headto-head with Darren Thomas, which was just about as unsavoury as the Ilott/Croft bout though missing the physical contact.

It was grim stuff and turned a worthy and exciting match into an unnecessarily controversial one. What is more, the saga runs on. Croft and Ilott now have to wait until tomorrow evening before they know their final fate and until Wednesday`s papers before the scandal is done with. What a thing bureaucracy is. Why does the issue have to linger and fester? Essex and Glamorgan could not have done more than the way in which they dealt with their players so swiftly and severely, yet still the discipline committee of the England and Wales Cricket Board have to come at it from the pulpit. I`m sorry, but to be twice judged for 10 seconds of stupidity is over-egging the righteousness.

The beauty of the Essex and Glamorgan action was that they knew their men and, nothwithstanding their clean records, let them have it with both barrels. Mark Ilott and Robert Croft are good blokes: real, earthy, loyal and respected competitors who fully understand they`ve cocked it up and embarrassed themselves and their counties. For a moment, amidst unbearable tension, they lost the plot, spat the dummy and doubtless wish to high heaven that they hadn`t. But they did and they`ve copped it and that should be that. Please, Mr Discipline Committee, either get in on the act at the time - the next morning, for example - or let the sleeping dog lie otherwise cricket will over accuse itself and two admirable cricketers will be carrying the can for the idea that the game has got to toughen itself up - at both ends of the scale, so to speak.

EARLIER during this eventful day I had an interesting hour with Duncan Fletcher, the Glamorgan and Western Province coach. Fletcher was an outstanding player for Zimbabwe in the Seventies and early Eighties and the shrewd captain on that remarkable day at Trent Bridge when they beat Australia in the 1983 World Cup.

This summer is his first experience of full-time county cricket and he said that he thought it was staleness rather than softness which most afflicted the intensity of the play. He didn`t sense enough hunger in attitude and commitment to each match and had the impression that although players wanted to do well, they didn`t need to because their living was secure and therefore there was a tendency to step off the gas.

He thought there was too much limited-overs cricket and said that unless you have played it yourself you can have no idea how much a one-day game takes out of you. He added that the structure of the domestic game in the rest of the world was more discerning and more concentrated and because of it most countries had gone past England. Not that English cricket was hopeless, not a bit of it - in fact he enjoyed it and thought it had huge potential - just that the administrators should embrace changes in the structure with enthusiasm and hope not with fear or mistrust.

He said that about 50 per cent of the cricketers he had seen during the season were below the standard of the players in the Cas- tle Cup in South Africa, which watered down the standard of the county championship but he added that he thought most of them had considerable untapped ability. He could understand that county staffs should be smaller but was concerned that more should be done to improve the 50 per cent rather than to demote them and therefore perhaps never to uncover their talent.

He was in favour of overseas players because, he said, it was very difficult to influence players from the sidelines and that the most effective place to learn was out in the middle. He cited Mal- colm Marshall as captain of Natal and Desmond Haynes as senior pro with Western Province as top quality cricketers who had been re- sponsible for the fast development of gifted young players such as Shaun Pollock and Lance Klusener, Jacques Kallis and Herschelle Gibbs. He admitted it would have been impossible for a non-playing coach to bring them on so quickly and was amazed to hear that there was a move to outlaw their influence. Unsurprisingly Glamorgan are keen to hang on to Fletcher and so are Western Province. He says that both are full time jobs so he will have to make a choice in September. Wales should keep its fingers crossed.

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