A Beautiful Game

by Mark Nicholas

  CHAPTER 4

  The Hampshire captaincy

  Richie Benaud said captaincy is 90 per cent luck and 10 per cent skill; but don’t try it without the 10 per cent. I agree with most things Richie said but not this. My guess is he was tongue-in-cheek or, if not, then certainly self-deprecating. The balance might be 50–50. You need luck with your players for sure, specifically the quality of your attack, and with the toss. You need magic from people who can turn a game on a dime. But that is not luck. When teammates used to wish Geoffrey Boycott luck, he would mutter about its irrelevance and the requirement of skill.

  Is it luck to place a fielder in a new position and see a catch go there next ball? Yes and no. In the 1988 Benson & Hedges Cup Final at Lord’s, I put Derbyshire in to bat. After four overs the score was 27 for no wicket. Stephen Jefferies panicked and insisted we spread the field. Instead, I called for a helmet, placed myself at forward short-leg and brought in another slip. At the end of the over the score was 28 for 2 and a slip catch had been dropped. The 2 wickets had fallen to easy catches at forward short leg. Was I lucky that Jefferies bowled two beautiful inswingers? Was I lucky that the batsmen, Peter Bowler and Bruce Roberts, played forward and edged from bat and pad into my hands? No, I had considered it possible. Was it a fluke that John Morris edged to third slip? I don’t think so. But I was lucky to win an important toss and lucky that Jefferies got it right at that moment, though I would argue that my aggressive tactic focused his mind. Was I lucky that the ball looped into my hands at short leg? Of course, but I was standing in the right place. On the BBC, Benaud called it brilliant captaincy. Jefferies took 5 for 13 and we bowled Derbyshire out for 117 before going on to win comfortably. My reckoning is that you make your own luck and much of it comes from self-belief.

  Ian Botham and Shane Warne were luckier than most, but they would argue they made their own luck. Warne told me the real reason he retired was that he had ‘run out of arse’. I felt the same towards the end of my captaincy career. Some senior Hampshire players did not agree. Paul Terry thought I became more defensive as I grew older. My view is that the players were less gifted, which limited my options. In that Benson & Hedges Cup Final (when I was young and fearless) I wanted to shock the players out of their nervous and sloppy start with a bold statement. I also thought the long delay to fetch the helmet from the dressing room and the animated, almost theatrical, changing of the field might niggle the Derbyshire batsmen and ever so slightly change their approach. I hoped they would think, ‘I’m not getting out to this bullshit,’ and, thus, change down a gear. Am I lucky that it worked? Maybe, maybe not.

  In mid-July 1984, Nick Pocock walked me around the United Services ground at Portsmouth and told me he was going to stand down from the captaincy of Hampshire forthwith. He said he wanted me to take over and the cricket committee did not need much persuading. Neither did I. With Pocock in the wings, I led the side for the rest of the season and was appointed formally that autumn, after ratification by the main committee. I had secured a place in the Hampshire team in 1980, blown it in 1981 but come back convincingly enough in 1982 and 1983, when I was the first English-born batsman to 1000 runs. By 1984 I was settled at number 3 and, although infuriatingly inconsistent, played enough substantial innings to justify the club’s faith.

  Pocock was a strong character and a tremendous supporter of mine. We are good friends to this day. He warned me of the likely dissenters, first among whom was the richly gifted Trevor Jesty, a man whose numbers never quite reflected his ability. If my theory about luck is right, and Botham personified it, we could use Jesty as an example of the opposite of Botham, for the extent of their talents was not so far apart as the result of their efforts. Jesty’s brilliant stroke-making, late outswingers and safe hands were almost apologetic in comparison to the compelling certainty in Botham’s similar skills and the confident manner in which he applied them. Botham won many a moment through the power of his personality. Jesty was more reticent and fortune was not as kind to him. He served the game with distinction, retiring from life as a first-class umpire at the end of the 2013 season.

  Trevor had been with the club a decade longer than me and felt he deserved a crack at the job. He told the press that you could only be appointed Hampshire captain if you had three initials—M.C.J. Nicholas, N.E.J. Pocock, R.M.C. Gilliat, E.D.R. Eagar—and that plain old T.E. Jesty had no chance, so he was leaving and moving to Surrey. I could hardly blame him, though I did point out that Hampshire’s longest-serving captain was L.H. Tennyson—albeit, the Honourable L.H. Tennyson. It was sad when Trevor and his wife, Jacqui, moved on. They had been at the heart of the club for a long time, and Trevor had played a good hand during the summer of 1973 when the County Championship was won under Gilliat’s savvy leadership. Now it was my turn. There was a job to do.

  Cricket captaincy involves many variables, requires clear lines of thought and attitude, and assumes responsibility for group interaction that is initially driven by individual ambition. The key is to trust the players, not to nanny them. It is a challenging and stimulating job. The captain must have a modus operandi that the players understand and into which they buy. Mine was to keep the game alive at all costs and to risk losing in order to try to win. Most of the players were up for this. Those with doubts kept them to themselves.

  There is a lot of talk in sport about team spirit. We had long been known as ‘Happy Hants’, which implied we were good blokes but a bit of a pushover. I was sick of seeing sides arrive to play against us looking as if they expected to beat the nice guys. I preferred us to play a bit tougher and with an air of self-confidence. This was often perceived as arrogance but even our more understated characters approved. Chris Smith was the most committed supporter of this approach, and Malcolm Marshall too: after all, the West Indies personified it. If it meant losing a few friends, then so be it.

  Team spirit is natural when you are winning but often forced if you are not. At these times, players begin to talk behind each other’s backs, retreat into cliques and undermine the greater good. There are two options here. The first is to sit everyone down together and thrash it out, something I tried in my early years as captain but abandoned. The problem was that one or two players dominated these gatherings and others kept their powder dry for dark corners. Complaints became personal—batsmen versus bowlers was common—and too subjective for a solution.

  The second option is to meet the players one on one, understand their view and ensure they understand yours and what you expect from them. This is the moment to encourage individuals to think for themselves within the role you have mutually agreed upon; it is also the moment to set targets, both personal and for the team. It allows for a shared point of view and therefore provides a platform for support. It also allows for a shared burden, as the explanation of someone else’s anxiety relieves tension and encourages more generous consideration for others outside the self-contained bubble in which most professional sportsmen live.

  In general, we had a very good collective spirit. Understandably enough, it could go missing when we were losing. Very little can be done about this, except to encourage talent and self-belief, and hope to start winning again quickly. In hindsight, the Hampshire dressing room might have benefited from being more confrontational, so that personal misgivings came to the surface rather than festered. This was probably my fault. For one thing, a dictator doesn’t much like being dictated to; for another, I learnt it was safer to keep everyone calm because it’s a long old county season if you are at each other’s throats.

  Mike Brearley encouraged plain speaking at team meetings, both with England and Middlesex. The very strong characters around him frequently laid into one another but then crossed the white line as a unit. I felt such democracy was a risk. Yes, you want the players to have ideas, not only about the cricket but also about the running of the club. But the risk of too much discussion is a loss of decisiveness and, frankly, I procrastinated enough as it was. Most people react well to
authority if it is thoughtfully and consistently applied. Consultation can lead to better leadership, especially when a captain has much to learn about himself. The fact is, I had some players I trusted and others I did not. So I tended to listen to a few but not to them all.

  Traditionally, cricketers are sceptical about team meetings and tactics. So much happens so quickly that plans conceived over breakfast are worthless by lunch, or sooner. Ranjitsinhji said he had seen ‘men go grey in the service of the game’ without considering tactics or other people’s roles or problems. In proof of this point, I captained Derek Underwood in a match at Lord’s between MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) and Australia in 1985, and was astonished by his indifference to the placing of the field. ‘Up to you, matey,’ he said with a smile. ‘You’re the captain, I’ll go with whatever you think.’ Blimey, I was in short pants and long socks when this bloke was first knocking over Australians. Underwood was a special cricketer and the loveliest man, who never understood why cricketers were so eager to be captain.

  Of course, a captain needs to balance the input of his colleagues against the final say. He must, above all, rely on his own instinct. If the gut says it, then do it, for if you wait a split second the moment will be gone. This further suggests that prolonged analysis of a situation is unnecessary—in other words, think about it too much and the horse has bolted.

  The longer I did the job, the better I was at man management but the less adventurous I became tactically. I think you know too much after a while and a kind of fear takes over. Instead of thinking, ‘If we try something we could win,’ you think, ‘If I do that we might lose.’ Initially, I could trust the team to deal with losing but not as the years went on. I guess we all grew up. Or I did, which, after the best part of twelve years in the job, was understandable. Some of the team of the 1980s had moved on and therefore the social make-up and dynamic of the team shifted. I have said that during my last two seasons as captain, 1994 and 1995, the players were not as talented as the world-class cricketers we had previously. Neither were the majority as experienced. By definition, then, we were less likely to win and therefore the collective ambition was tempered by self-doubt, which exaggerates self-interest. This completely threw me in the 1994 season but, after a dreadful start to 1995, I began to work it out and came to enjoy that summer very much. Heath Streak, the Zimbabwean, was the overseas player and John Stephenson had arrived from Essex to assume the captaincy the following year. You could not wish to meet two men with bigger hearts.

  Of course, the most important thing was for the players to trust me. Simply wearing the stripes cannot guarantee respect. Brearley said, ‘The name on the box is often not the same as the contents inside it.’ Respect comes from performance—an occasional problem for me; from decision-making, both on and off the field—generally okay; and from the qualities you display as a human being—the good was pretty good, I’d say (!), and the bad either a) unintentionally demeaned others or b) was too driven by emotional highs and lows. On one occasion, three of the senior players took me aside to discuss a) and b) and point out the problems they created. This was difficult for me and for them but it served a valuable purpose for us all. It was to my advantage that our team began as friends. Most of us had been together since the days in the underground dressing room, and we had come to accept idiosyncrasies and flaws in one another. My knowledge of the game was sound and I loved bringing people together. On balance, I was thought to be the right choice. Equally, I was able to see their honesty as crucial to the bigger picture of Hampshire cricket.

  As soon as I became captain, I asked for Paul Terry as my vice-captain. He was tactically sound, popular with young and old, and had a lovely way with the bowlers, who trusted his counsel. I was hugely fond of Paul and, having rejoiced in his selection for England the summer before, was now able to work alongside him as we planned our path for success in the years to follow. At least that was how we saw things then. In our mid-twenties we were idealists and none the worse for it.

  We were a very happy team, or teams. Over the twelve years that I steered the ship, there were few periods of truly rough water. Of all the possible angles one could take on playing the game professionally, the most important seemed to be to enjoy it, and we certainly did that. There was the odd hiccup but only in the cause of the greater good. I don’t suppose any group of people live together for twelve years in perfect harmony. Most of the key players back then are still friends now. I wish we saw each other more but the global spread of residency makes that impossible. We speak well of each other and respect both our past and present. I am sure we are respected by those against whom we played.

  The more I have thought about cricket captaincy, the more I have come to realise that the key is to harness the collective input and expertise of the group. Each of the players has strengths, and therefore captains should play to them rather than spending too much time attempting to shore up weaknesses.

  Like most captains, I was could be guilty of reacting negatively to a mistake. This makes players fearful and less free to express themselves. I love the way the modern captain tells his players to let go of inhibition. I suggested this to a number of our players and some responded better than others. The fear of failure is both inherent and applied: letting go is simultaneously an opportunity and a risk. Go figure. I became less reactive and more patient over time. Eventually, just about anything could wash over me. It is a complex balance to show that you care, without caring too much.

  THE INTERREGNUM

  I took over the captaincy of the team in the late summer of 1984, and Hampshire cricket was formally mine to make something of by the start of the summer of 1985. I had watched the club disintegrate as a school of learning for the young through the summers of 1978 and 1979. A chippy attitude had developed, especially around the performances of Barry Richards and Andy Roberts, who were not pulling their weight. For close on a decade, Richards had been a magnificent cricketer for Hampshire, the biggest drawcard around the counties post Garry Sobers and pre Viv Richards. Roberts had an outstanding first year in 1974 but never found the long-term commitment later displayed by Malcolm Marshall. Fast bowling is hard enough but the grind of the county circuit sent many a speedster to the knacker’s yard. Two-thirds of the way through the 1978 season, both walked out on their contracts.

  The feeling from senior players was that the captain, Richard Gilliat, was losing his grip. This whisper was hardly a surprise; county pros liked to blame those around them and the captain was first in line, followed by the blokes earning more than they were.

  I played a couple of first-class games in both 1978 and 1979 but was no more than a good club player and neither physically fit nor mentally strong enough. Most of the old pros were jealous of any youngster who got a game, and their reluctance to embrace us left a very bad taste. Mike Taylor was an exception but his influence was limited by the demands on his own performance as the years took their toll. Frankly, we were happier in the 2nd XI. Imagine that, a professional environment in which young players had no desire to move up the ladder!

  Peter Sainsbury, our coach, did all he could to inject discipline and set standards but he was more follower than leader. The only man who had been a part of Ingleby-Mackenzie’s triumph in 1961, Sains was a tough all-round cricketer. Good-humoured, diligent and enthusiastic, he had no illusions about his limited but well-applied abilities: ‘When I started in 1955, I took wickets with balls that went straight on as batsmen played for the turn and I am still doing so now,’ he said when he was chosen as one of Wisden’s five cricketers of the year for the 1974 edition. Modesty was his byword and, though he never said so himself, many a lesser cricketer has earned the colours of his country. When he hung up his boots at the conclusion of the 1976 season, he had 1316 first-class wickets, 20,176 runs and 617 catches. Not half bad.

  The single breath of fresh air during this two-year hiatus was the arrival of Malcolm Marshall from Barbados. Maco was a slip of a thing with a fast arm and
natural way of bowling, batting and catching. Not much, however, suggested he would become the best fast bowler in the game. During one of his first matches for Hampshire it snowed. He wore jeans, T-shirt, a cheap leather jacket and sandals without socks. Seeing him curled up beside the dressing-room radiator, we doubted he would return the next day, never mind sign for another year with the club. We could not have been more wrong. After an entertaining team shopping spree for thick woollen jumpers, thicker socks, an overcoat and mittens, he bowled like the wind, took 7 in the match and stayed at our side until the end of the summer of 1993, when his appetite for county cricket finally ran out.

  At most counties, the cricket was run by a ‘cricket chairman’ as distinct from the elected chairman, who directly represented the members. I suppose this non-executive position was a forerunner to the directors of cricket, football and rugby that are so prevalent now. Our boss was Charlie Knott, a former off spinner for Hampshire, and very obviously the man around whom the club revolved. He signed the players, negotiated the wages, defined the small print in the contracts, appointed the ‘cricket subcommittee’, ran the meetings and chose the captain—albeit with approval from the main committee.

  He conducted most of his meetings with players in his car, breaking news—both good and bad—with the same face of foreboding. He was a shrew-like man who wore a pinstripe suit, county tie and trilby. He watched the cricket closely but rarely passed comment on the team’s performances, preferring to let the captain run the show and be accountable. He protected the players in the face of the general committee, a body that rarely, if ever, argued the toss with him. I rather admired Charlie, for this was no easy job. He did it for nothing more than a genuine love of the club and, I imagine, the pleasure of something meaningful late in life.

  In 1980, Knott gave the captaincy to Nick Pocock, a decision that raised blood pressure around the place but a brilliant one all the same. Nick was very public school—a disciple of Ingleby-Mackenzie but in a less forgiving age—and therefore a constant butt of the old pros’ humour. He had never quite commanded a regular spot in the team, which meant there was a mighty fuss over his elevation. The more the old pros whispered in corners, the more the rest of us loved it. We now had a captain who cared about the young talent available to him and this reawakened our enthusiasm. We were not world-beaters but we awoke each morning eager to play and learn, which was not necessarily the case in a county system that all too often drained the exuberance of youth.