stay the same
Neil Manthorp flicks through the past century of cricket as we head into the next
The day the famous Dr WG Grace, in the autumn of his career, replaced the bails after being bowled and said to the startled bowler: “The people have come to see me bat, not you bowl, sonnyE…”
That would have to rate among cricket’s “moments”. Good, bad, ugly or just funny, it’s definitely a “moment”. But that was in the last century.
The original, one and only “Good Doctor” passed away on October 25 1915. Every newspaper in England unhesitatingly described him as the greatest cricketer of all time. Once, in his 47th year, he scored 1 000 first-class runs in the month of May. Batting in a jacket.
Now, as we come to the end of the second century in which the game has been played, we can reflect how much has changed. And how little.
Every generation has an understandable tendency to believe that their “moments” within the game are unprecedented, never before seen. Not so.
Take the great, fast-scoring innings of today. One day cricket may have changed the art of batting, but there have always been brilliant ball strikers.
In 1909, the legendary Gilbert Jessop blasted an astonishing 161 out of a total of 199 for Gloucestershire against Hampshire. His innings lasted just 95 minutes. South Africa’s contribution came, quixotically, from the usually cunning left armer Charlie Llewellyn (one of only three South Africans to have taken over 1 000 first-class wickets, along with Mike Procter and Allan Donald) who was taken for 61 in four overs on that day.
In 1920 Percy Fender hammered an unbeaten century in a mere 35 minutes for Surrey against Northamptonshire. The game was less statistically conscious than it is today and even the original scorecard records a discrepancy over whether he struck 17 or 18 fours to accompany his five sixes.
Lance Klusener, unique? No, not even with the fact that he is an all-rounder. Jessop was good enough to open the bowling for England.
Talking of all-rounders, South Africa’s glittering history in that department began as far back as 1905, when Aubrey Faulkner played his first Test match. His leg-break and googly bowling played a significant part in South Africa’s first Test – and series – win against England.
In the first Test ever played in Johannesburg, at the Old Wanderers, Faulkner scored 78 and 123 and returned a match analysis of 8/160. On the 1910/11 tour of Australia he recorded a then record aggregate of 732 runs, including 115 in the third Test at Adelaide, the first in which South Africa ever beat Australia.
So great batting and great bowling have been around for a while. Fair enough. But there was no controversy or ill-feeling in those good old days, certainly no standing your ground and/or intimidating the umpire. Really. Apart from Dr Grace’s small disagreement with the laws of the game over 100 years ago, let nobody forget 1932/33.
Douglas Jardine was a captain so hard, and so ruthless, he appeared to care for no man and nothing but victory. “Bodyline” was a theory contrived solely to negate the greatest batsman the world will ever see, Don Bradman. And it worked, too. Bradman limping through the series to finish top of the averages with a miserable 65,57 – almost five runs higher than the second-highest career Test average (20+ tests) recorded by Graeme Pollock.
The governments of England and Australia debated the series in an attempt to prevent a complete fallout. Now that was controversy. Whatever yesterday’s players may tell you about “walking” and not walking for disputed catches, and accepting a player’s word, they were – and remain – but squabbles upon a gentleman’s battlefield.
When Jacques Kallis refused to walk for Chris Adams’ catch in the second test he merely upheld the very first principle of cricket – to win at all costs, because that, literally, is what the game used to be about.
Cricket was a betting game, played with thousands of working men clambering and hollering over every delivery, hoping against hope to subsidise their meagre wages. How many batsmen do you think said “Oh, I nicked that … I’m off”.
The old saying that cricket was a “gentleman’s game” arrived later when “gentleman” amateurs wished to be distinguished from the grubby professionals who were paid for their services to the game. For all the soft underbelly the game purports to carry, it came from cast-iron, working-class roots, only then spreading to, and being hijacked by, Eton, Harrow, Winchester and the landed gentry. Once it reached the colonies, of course, the hard edge was re-entrenched.
If the game had not been so strong it would never have survived the Terry Packer era and the rebel tours. Imagine 15 players receiving life-time bans. Life? Now that was news. But not nearly as much news as two thirds of a cricket-playing country receiving life-time bans from birth.
Tony Greig, a South African, captained England, then came Dennis Lillee’s aluminium bat, and Javed Miandad threatening to belt that great Australian fast bowler over the head with his bat. Ian Botham smoked dagga and won a Test series by himself, the West Indies changed the game with their four-pronged pace attack and then the rest of the world clubbed together to stop them with legislation because they couldn’t do it with bat or ball.
And now, the last Test cricket of the century will be played at the Basin Reserve in Wellington, New Zealand, where Brian Lara hopes to salvage some pride for his disintegrating team; at the MCG in Australia where Sachin Tendulkar hopes to do the same for his; and at Kingsmead in Durban.
England, the founders of the game, are desperately trying to turn the corner after a decade in the doldrums. Against Donald, Pollock and Kallis, on a juicy pitch, they will do well to survive. Very well. South Africa has more talent, more depth, by a greater margin than ever before, than the country that invented the game. So, too, does Australia, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. England’s problems, as a nation, seem to be sociological, not sporting. They are destined to play in division two for many years to come, along with Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Kenya, Holland and Argentina.
As for Kingsmead, well, what a treat. Can Kirsten come right? Kallis, back as an all- rounder and seemingly faster than ever. Cullinan, Cronje and Rhodes, what a middle order, and followed by the best 7, 8, 9 in the history of the game (so prove me wrong). Zulu and Polly, in tandem, in front of their home crowd. Donald, one of the best ever, fired up and fit. If they can’t put bums on seats then no one, no team can.
Lest they get ahead of themselves, however, they need only look back to the end of the last century when the father of modern cricket was coming to the end of his career. He achieved a fame, a notoriety, a commercial value that today’s players probably never will. Outside a county ground, sometime in the 1890s, the following poster was placed on the walls: “Cricket match admission threepence. If WG Grace plays admission sixpence.”
Now that would be something to live up to.