Simon Hughes: Game`s unwanted men face one last, unplayable delivery (1 September 1997)

Monday 1 September 1997

Game`s unwanted men face one last, unplayable delivery

By Simon Hughes

AMID all the concern about Michael Atherton and the England captaincy, spare a thought at this time for players in a real plight: those girding themselves for the chop. A variety of quivering aspirants and gnarled veterans up and down the country know they have a few days to salvage their careers before being summoned to hear the fateful words: "The committee have decided not to renew your contract."

Whether the individuals expected it or not, this news still hits them in the solar plexus. It is not only a stark realisation of failure, but also plunges the majority into a serious identity crisis. All those years of craft and graft seem suddenly worthless.

Cricket defines each of them, gives them a position and a status. Accountants might collect Van Morrison albums, bank clerks go parachuting at weekends, computer technicians attend real-ale rallies. They have some leisure pursuit to escape from the daily grind. But for the county pro, cricket is their job and their hobby. Without it they don`t know who or what they are.

Most have committed their whole adult life to cricket and have little else to offer. They will hardly bear to contemplate the prospect of 30 years stacking shelves or sorting mail. There will be no redundancy payment or leaving party, and just to add insult to injury, having heard their sentence they stagger unsteadily back to the sanctity of the dressing room, only to discover that someone else has al- ready commandeered their locker.

At some counties, the head coach is appointed chief executioner. Leicester`s Jack Birkenshaw was lumbered with this awful task last Thursday, having to inform Gordon Parsons, Phil Whitticase and Gregor MacMillan that their services were no longer required.

"Without doubt it`s the hardest day of the year," he said on Saturday, staring glumly at Leicester`s 23rd day ruined by rain. "Usual- ly you`ve become friends with the player and their family, and each one thinks that next year they might finally come good. We do try to help them ring around other counties.

"It`s sad, too, for older players like Gordon who still think they can do a job, but we can`t have them around for ever, we`ve got to get younger players through. After a few years they realise it was the best thing that could have happened."

With Parsons` departure goes the last remaining seam bowler from the 1970s and the uncovered wickets era (he made his debut in 1978). He adapted from his original bull-headed style to become a crafty dob-bowler but his decreasing pace failed to inhibit a compulsion to turn the air blue if the batsman nicked a streaky boundary.

This might count against him when the next invitations are sent out to the game`s most prestigious retirement home. Cricket in John Paul Getty`s private Buckinghamshire valley is a sedate affair in a chocolate-box setting. Ex-pros whose expanding figures stretch their old county sweaters, pat each other on the back and say: "You haven`t lost it old lad."

Clearly, among those appearing yesterday, neither ex-Kent and Glamorgan player Charlie Rowe (100) nor former England wicketkeeper Paul Downton (50) had.

ATHERTON had a week to make up his mind about the England job, but, out of respect for what he has achieved, his opposite number, Mark Taylor, will not be hassled into a hasty verdict. Taylor is properly held up as a superb man-manager and tactician, though on closer inspection, some of his decisions are not as cannily conceived as it appears.

On the second afternoon at the Oval, with England on the rack but the light deteriorating, he introduced spin rather than allow the England batsmen to go off and regain their composure. When this didn`t work, he called for Glenn McGrath, an act which successfully per- suaded the batsmen to retreat indoors, ending play for the day.

It was assumed Taylor was trying to disrupt the rhythm of the third-wicket pair, Thorpe and Hussain. It now emerges he and his wife had tickets for "Phantom of the Opera" that night and didn`t want to miss the first act.

IF anyone is still doubting the need for a change in the structure of county cricket, the situation next Friday should drill the message home. The day before domestic cricket`s biggest showpiece - the NatWest final - the participants are at the other end of the country. Warwickshire are playing in Durham and Essex are at Old Trafford.

It`s like expecting Chelsea to make their way to Wembley via an evening skirmish at St James` Park.

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