I have always considered that my bowling abilities sat me in the bowlers pantheon somewhere between a dead halibut and Mother Theresa of Calcutta, but just last weekend, and I promise I’m not making this up, I took 5 for 42. Me! One of the least talented cricketers ever to take to the field of play – 5-fer!
My team, batting first, scored 188; lurching from 0-2 to 18-4 to 120ish-4 and finally 188 all out (your esteemed author - 1, plummer than plum lbw to some ancient left arm spinner, hit on the back foot approximately 5cms in front of middle stump – so I can’t really complain can I?) The opposition got off to a reasonably good start, before I was brought on first change. I had, whilst we’d been batting, been shirking umpiring duties and bowling in the nets and sending 99.9% of the deliveries wobbling pathetically down the leg-side, so when informed of my imminent promotion to cherry-chucker, my response was not what you might call enthusiastic, (it was along the lines of “oh for **** sake I don’t want to ******* bowl ‘coz I’m ******* shit – at least I’m honest...) but the captain insisted. By the end of my first over I had 2 wickets in the bag, a very smart bottom edged catch by the ‘keeper and an lbw, where the ball genuinely drifted and turned. I won’t bore you with the rest of the details, but the other 3 were out bowled, caught at cover and caught at midwicket. Like the tortoise, I had proved that slow – or very, very slow in my case – can, on occassion, win the race. In the space of an hour I felt like I had gone from wallowing in the shallows to ascending Mount Olympus to sup with the Cricketing Gods. Self-delusion had set in. I feel more than a little embarrassed admitting this, but I was checking the County Championship scores on BBCi and noticed that Lancashire and erstwhile England paceman Saj Mahmood had taken 5-76 against Sussex, and actually said, out loud, without a hint of irony, “not as good as me, mate”. You’ll be glad to know that I have calmed down since and retained a little perspective. 5 wickets on a Sunday afternoon in the suburbs of Birmingham does not make you Gary Sobers. It did make me think though. When I was bragging to various people about my exploits, it only occurred to me as an afterthought to mention that we’d had won the game. Our teachers may have told us that it is the taking part that counts and we may tell our team-mates that it is the winning that counts, but in our heart of hearts we know it is the personal glory that we really seek. Geoff Boycott didn’t score over 8,000 test match runs at 47 a piece because he was a team man, who only cared for the result. He did it because he was immensely selfish and a devout believer of his own wondrousness and as a consequence of this England rarely lost test matches when he played. (20 lost out of 108 played). Do you believe Kevin Pietersen when he says it’s the team that matters? Of course you don’t. Cricket is the only team sport that I can think of where the opportunities for self-aggrandisement are quite so abundant. When people talk of the great moments, 9 times out of 10 it is the individual who we hero worship, not the team. Think of Botham in ’81, Flintoff in ’05, Warne’s 708 test wickets, Lara’s 400, even ‘Bradman’s Invincibles’, not just the ‘Invincibles’ but Bradman’s own personal entourage of Invincibles . But it is always going to be the case with a sport built on a myriad of statistics that are accumulated through the specific and definable actions of individual players. The desire to excel in cricket may not always be motivated by team spirit, but a certain level of self-centeredness with a splash of arrogance is ultimately what makes a team a winning one.
The roaring Warwickshire Bears have chewed their way into the quarter finals of the Twenty20 Cup. Finishing top of the Midlands/Wales group, suffering just 1 defeat and only after they had already qualified in first place. I have been most impressed. Considering how they were so utterly god-awful in the Friends Provident Trophy, losing to just about everyone and anyone, including Ireland (don’t get me started...) along the way, I feared the Twenty20 would be a similar story. In reality, they have been magnificent. Ant Botha and old-man Salisbury have together plundered 27 wickets @ 11 a piece, whilst Jonathan Trott has scored 255 runs @ 42 and in the process passed 1000 Twenty20 career runs. Chris Martin, of New Zealand Cricket fame, rather than that wanker from Coldplay, has also chipped in with some very tidy and effective new ball bowling. Fingers crossed they can roll over defending champions Kent next week (in Rob Key’s case, that’s a lot of rolling...), so I can have an expensive trip down to Southampton later in the month for finals day.
After the thrash and bash of Twenty20 the counties have returned to the more sedate world of the County Championship. Suddenly watching batsmen carefully playing out maidens when they have spent the previous 2 weeks belting the living daylights out of anything that’s not speared into the base of middle and leg is a little bewildering. But after watching batsman getting down on one knee and reverse paddle-sweeping good length deliveries over the top of wicket keeper’s heads for a fortnight, it has been nice to see some ‘proper’ cricket shots.
"The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else" - Martina Navratilova
My team, batting first, scored 188; lurching from 0-2 to 18-4 to 120ish-4 and finally 188 all out (your esteemed author - 1, plummer than plum lbw to some ancient left arm spinner, hit on the back foot approximately 5cms in front of middle stump – so I can’t really complain can I?) The opposition got off to a reasonably good start, before I was brought on first change. I had, whilst we’d been batting, been shirking umpiring duties and bowling in the nets and sending 99.9% of the deliveries wobbling pathetically down the leg-side, so when informed of my imminent promotion to cherry-chucker, my response was not what you might call enthusiastic, (it was along the lines of “oh for **** sake I don’t want to ******* bowl ‘coz I’m ******* shit – at least I’m honest...) but the captain insisted. By the end of my first over I had 2 wickets in the bag, a very smart bottom edged catch by the ‘keeper and an lbw, where the ball genuinely drifted and turned. I won’t bore you with the rest of the details, but the other 3 were out bowled, caught at cover and caught at midwicket. Like the tortoise, I had proved that slow – or very, very slow in my case – can, on occassion, win the race. In the space of an hour I felt like I had gone from wallowing in the shallows to ascending Mount Olympus to sup with the Cricketing Gods. Self-delusion had set in. I feel more than a little embarrassed admitting this, but I was checking the County Championship scores on BBCi and noticed that Lancashire and erstwhile England paceman Saj Mahmood had taken 5-76 against Sussex, and actually said, out loud, without a hint of irony, “not as good as me, mate”. You’ll be glad to know that I have calmed down since and retained a little perspective. 5 wickets on a Sunday afternoon in the suburbs of Birmingham does not make you Gary Sobers. It did make me think though. When I was bragging to various people about my exploits, it only occurred to me as an afterthought to mention that we’d had won the game. Our teachers may have told us that it is the taking part that counts and we may tell our team-mates that it is the winning that counts, but in our heart of hearts we know it is the personal glory that we really seek. Geoff Boycott didn’t score over 8,000 test match runs at 47 a piece because he was a team man, who only cared for the result. He did it because he was immensely selfish and a devout believer of his own wondrousness and as a consequence of this England rarely lost test matches when he played. (20 lost out of 108 played). Do you believe Kevin Pietersen when he says it’s the team that matters? Of course you don’t. Cricket is the only team sport that I can think of where the opportunities for self-aggrandisement are quite so abundant. When people talk of the great moments, 9 times out of 10 it is the individual who we hero worship, not the team. Think of Botham in ’81, Flintoff in ’05, Warne’s 708 test wickets, Lara’s 400, even ‘Bradman’s Invincibles’, not just the ‘Invincibles’ but Bradman’s own personal entourage of Invincibles . But it is always going to be the case with a sport built on a myriad of statistics that are accumulated through the specific and definable actions of individual players. The desire to excel in cricket may not always be motivated by team spirit, but a certain level of self-centeredness with a splash of arrogance is ultimately what makes a team a winning one.
The roaring Warwickshire Bears have chewed their way into the quarter finals of the Twenty20 Cup. Finishing top of the Midlands/Wales group, suffering just 1 defeat and only after they had already qualified in first place. I have been most impressed. Considering how they were so utterly god-awful in the Friends Provident Trophy, losing to just about everyone and anyone, including Ireland (don’t get me started...) along the way, I feared the Twenty20 would be a similar story. In reality, they have been magnificent. Ant Botha and old-man Salisbury have together plundered 27 wickets @ 11 a piece, whilst Jonathan Trott has scored 255 runs @ 42 and in the process passed 1000 Twenty20 career runs. Chris Martin, of New Zealand Cricket fame, rather than that wanker from Coldplay, has also chipped in with some very tidy and effective new ball bowling. Fingers crossed they can roll over defending champions Kent next week (in Rob Key’s case, that’s a lot of rolling...), so I can have an expensive trip down to Southampton later in the month for finals day.
After the thrash and bash of Twenty20 the counties have returned to the more sedate world of the County Championship. Suddenly watching batsmen carefully playing out maidens when they have spent the previous 2 weeks belting the living daylights out of anything that’s not speared into the base of middle and leg is a little bewildering. But after watching batsman getting down on one knee and reverse paddle-sweeping good length deliveries over the top of wicket keeper’s heads for a fortnight, it has been nice to see some ‘proper’ cricket shots.
"The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else" - Martina Navratilova
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