I include these thoughts here because I see Phillip Hughes as the best of the spirit of cricket. Think of that delightful, innocent smile; think of the flair with which he batted; the country upbringing that sat so well on grander stages; the absence of histrionics when poorly treated by selectors; his lack of cynicism; his generosity to fellow man; his myriad outside interests; and the sense of a life that sparkled, all too briefly.
Perhaps most remarkable was the global outpouring of grief at the news of his death. From one side of the world to the other, in places far flung and little known, candles were lit, wreaths and bats were laid down, vigils were held, prayers were read, songs were sung, concerts were interrupted and schools stopped in silence. Think of it: almost everyone who had been touched by cricket, and many who had not, reflected upon the life of a human being they did not even know. Each one of us had been confronted by our own mortality and left devastated that a young man so innocent and free had been taken.
We needed no inquest. Cricket was responsible. And that is why the spirit of cricket matters so much.
CHAPTER 8
Fast bowling
I did not pick up the ball from Gladstone Small that broke my cheekbone. The one from Jeff Thomson that hit me in the nuts was a full toss—imagine. Sylvester Clarke broke my right index finger with a good-length delivery that spat at my hand like fat from a frying pan. Allan Donald hit my shoulder so full on and with such force that my body gave way and I collapsed to my knees. I tried taking a ball from Courtney Walsh on the chest, very Brian Close, but it took the wind and guts out of me. Javagal Srinath hit my helmet and the ball ricocheted, one bounce, all the way to the long-leg fielder who assumed I had hit it and threw himself forward for the catch. Waqar Younis smashed up my left hand with a ball so fast I barely knew he had let it go. Wasim Akram broke my toe with a spearing yorker that went on to shatter the stumps. I hit the deck after that one too and people thought it was very funny. Having had a laugh and then shown some sympathy, Wasim told me I was out. These are the ones I clearly remember. There were more. Cricket is a dangerous game.
I think it is right to say that my own standard of batting swung above and below the median line. This inconsistency was hugely frustrating. I put it down to the demands of captaincy, a lack of application and too much cricket. In good times I was talked about by media and selectors as a possible Test cricketer, though I came closest to being chosen to play for England as captain. Simon Barnes writing in The Times once said: ‘Mark Nicholas’ main role in life seems to be to decorate the argument about the England captaincy without ever being very likely to receive it.’ Ouch.
In bad times, I should have dropped myself from the Hampshire team but the culture was different then. The club wanted the fellow appointed captain to be on the park. Now, with the influence of managers and coaches, that would not be the case.
Fast bowling could be a problem—not always, but often enough to become an Achilles heel that troubled me during two or three different periods of my career. My reactions and footwork were slow, so I relied on native instinct and timing. I was at my best when I took on the quicks because it got the feet moving and improved my mindset. Occasionally I had my day and especially remember a warm handshake from Curtly Ambrose upon reaching a decent hundred against Northamptonshire, along with a rare back-slap from Courtney Walsh after an unbeaten 70-odd that carried us over the line in a tight match with Gloucestershire. If I had a message about batting against fast bowling it would be to look to score, otherwise the crease can become a dark place. To defend well against real pace, you need a damn good method. In attack, you can get away with a bit of luck.
I made an unbeaten 115 for MCC against the 1985 Australians and was within a hair’s-breadth of being caught in the gully off Thomson first ball. I had gone in after Gooch was dismissed by Thommo twice in two balls—bowled off a no ball, then bowled next ball. Nervous, I fended at a bouncer and watched it loop a centimetre or so over Kepler Wessels’ outstretched fingers. I played some shots after that. The other bowlers were Geoff Lawson, Simon O’Donnell and the slow left-armer Murray Bennett. I got stuck into Bennett.
I am often asked who was the fastest bowler I faced. Thomson is the answer and by the time I had sniff of him, he was five years past his most frightening. He took 7 for 22 for Middlesex against Hampshire in a Benson & Hedges Cup match at Lord’s in 1981 and didn’t win the man-of-the-match award. (Incredibly, Alec Bedser, the chairman of selectors, was adjudicating and gave it to David Turner, Hampshire’s Wiltshire-born battler, who made 69 in a low run chase.)
It is said that Thomson’s action delivered the ball as if it came from a catapult, which is about right. It was as difficult to pick up as it was thrilling to face, like one of those insane rides in an amusement park where people scream out their mixed emotions. That same summer he came down the hill in the championship match at Basingstoke and hit me in the groin with a full toss. Strewth, he was quick. I lay writhing just 20 yards from the very spot where Wasim Akram was to shatter my toe some years later. Mike Brearley looked down at me and said, ‘It’s very apparent your mother was an actress. Now, if you’re okay, would you mind if we got on with the game.’ Bastard. A month later, Brearley was back as captain of England and winning the Ashes. Genius.
In short spells, others I have faced briefly matched Thomson—notably Imran Khan and Garth Le Roux, Akram and Younis, Andy Roberts, Ian Bishop, Rodney Hogg and Donald. Joel Garner could get a wriggle on too, by the way. Marshall took three balls to bounce me out in an exhibition game in New York—that was fast. You can’t count three balls, though. It was the only time I ever appeared on an ‘England’ team sheet and my contribution was instantly forgettable. Marshall might have been the best fast bowler of them all. I faced Dennis Lillee and he wasn’t too dusty, either. They have to be the top two, with Roberts and Akram nibbling at their heels.
Richie Benaud maintained that the fastest bowler he ever saw was Frank Tyson, marginally ahead of Thomson. Tyson hardly ever bowled short, said Benaud, just zeroed in on the stumps and your toes. The Typhoon only played in seventeen Test matches, taking 76 wickets at 18.56 each. When asked the same question, pretty much everyone else says Thommo. Others in this rarefied speed space are Harold Larwood, Roy Gilchrist, Michael Holding, Shoaib Akhtar and Brett Lee.
Shoaib Akhtar bowled cricket’s first recorded 100-mile-per-hour ball in Cape Town in 2003. Thommo reckons 100 miles per hour was his stock ball. Nick Knight played the Shoaib delivery to square leg as if he were facing a county trundler in a Sunday League game. Paul Terry maintains that the fastest bowling he faced was from a seething Ian Botham in a cup match at Taunton, and Paul played a couple of Tests against the West Indies in 1984. The cricketers of Lancashire and Worcestershire say that a match on a lightning-quick pitch at Old Trafford in the early 1990s made the county bowlers feel like Lillee and Thomson in Perth. Mind you, one of them was Patrick Patterson. Michael Slater will never forget Devon Malcolm in Perth on the England tour of 1994–95, just as the South Africans still shiver at the thought of Malcolm at the Oval a few months earlier.
In the mid-1980s, Robert Maxwell launched Sportsweek magazine. The mag’s advertising campaigns on television were brilliant. The best of them was cricket-specific and opened with the back view of Joel Garner returning to his mark. The picture was ‘soft’—maybe a touch defocused—and relayed in slow motion from a locked-off camera just above the batsman’s stumps. The soundtrack was a beating heart and over it a man’s voice, speaking slowly and deliberately, said: ‘You’ve got two-fifths of a second. He can bowl full, he can bowl a good length, he can bowl short; you can play forward or you can play back.’ At which the audio is turned up: boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom.
Now in the distance, Garner turns to face the camera and begin his approach to the wicket, head bent forward, knees high like sprinter, long powerful arms working hard at his side. ‘He can swing the ball, he can seam the ball, he has got the yorker and the bouncer. What
have you got?’ Audio up: boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom.
By now Garner is close to the stumps and bringing himself to his full height. He is six feet and ten inches tall, immensely strong and menacing. The heartbeat soundtrack has sped up: boom-boomboomboomboomboom . . .
‘You can block or drive or cut or pull, or hook, if you dare.’ Boomboomboomboom . . .
‘The close fielders can smell fear. Is it yours?’ Boomboomboomboomboomboom . . .
At which point Garner releases the ball from his hand and the action cuts to normal speed. The ball comes at the camera like a bullet from a gun.
‘You can play for . . .’
Whereupon, in full frame, sheet glass—previously undetected by the camera but encased around the stumps—violently shatters at full impact and volume. It is as if a grenade has exploded.
‘Too late.’ Pause. ‘Get inside sport, get inside Sportsweek.’
Which is pretty much it. Against fast bowling there are a number of options but no time. The things that matter are preparation and instinct. There is physical danger, so you are either up for that or not; there are a lot of balls from which you cannot score, forget them; from those you can, make sure of your timing, for if you try to hit the ball too hard you will miss out. You don’t actually think about these options as the ball is travelling, you just react, trusting practice and eye. Eye is the key. Don’t even think about taking your eye off the ball. If you do, the glass shatters.
When I heard the news about the blow to Phillip Hughes, I was reminded of Imran and Le Roux at Hove in 1980. I was wearing a sunhat and my Bradfield College thigh pad. I had never been much interested in thigh pads, backing myself to make contact with most balls bowled on that line and to score from them. The sunhat became a target for bloodthirsty opponents. Here I was, a naive public schoolboy, swaggering out in a floppy sunhat. Thinking back I cringe.
Imran bowled up the hill at alarming pace. He was loose, having just made an unbeaten hundred, and motivated by the sunhat. He moved with a feline grace that disguised the devil; Garth came down the hill like a battering ram. Garth bowled the heavier ball, the one that hurt most. Imran bowled the one more likely to get you out: the fast inswinger from wide on the crease that, if pitched up, homed in on the stumps and, if short, homed in on you. The Hove pitch was quick and bouncy back then and Imran and Garth loved playing this bully-boy game with county batsmen who were woefully short on experience, technique and, in many cases, courage too.
Imagine standing by the side of the motorway and watching the cars in the fast lane flying past you at 90 miles per hour and more. There is a drama and excitement in both that sight and sound, and there is shock in its potential. The cricket ball weighs 5 and a half ounces and is hard as a rock when new. The seam is strung tight and feels rough, like sisal. The new cricket ball is a potential weapon of destruction. You are standing 20 yards away and you are the target. You are the ‘too late’ in the ad.
Try standing directly behind and close to the net when the professionals are practising. If a batsman plays and misses, you will instinctively recoil your head and maybe your body too. You will be surprised by how fast the ball comes and the threat it poses. Multiply this by double the effort, double the adrenaline, often a faster pitch, the presence of an opponent at the crease to awaken the senses of the bowler, and add in the urgings of colleagues and crowd. There is no way to replicate fast bowling, only to imagine what it might be like. Honestly, a high percentage of recreational cricketers would be shocked by how fast Shane Warne bowled his leg-break and certainly by the sound of the revs he imparted to the ball fizzing through the air. So imagine Imran and Le Roux or Lillee and Thomson.
What to do? I think the first thing is to stay very still. Allan Border flexed his knees and dipped his head a little, just before the bowler released the ball. Then his head was still when the ball began its journey. Of course, you need courage and you need to stay smart. You will get out—everyone does eventually—so worrying about the loss of your wicket is wasted energy. As Ian Chappell advises, watch the bloody ball from the hand in the bowler’s approach and follow it like a hawk until it reaches you. By all means have trigger movements but be as near to off stump as suits your game when the ball is delivered. In other words, leave yourself as little to do as possible. There is no time, so improve the odds by being secure and ready.
In this two-fifths of a second, you are not processing ideas and coming to conclusions. You are simply reacting. Your brain already has preconceptions and responses. Let your instinct work with those. Limit your options and reduce the likelihood of error. Decide, for example, if you’d prefer to duck or sway from the short ball; to stand and defend or to ride the bounce; to hook or to uppercut. Have the answers as your default position. Keep your grip on the bat soft and defend very straight, back down the pitch, but allow the pace of the ball to create angles and deflections off the blade. You will get ones and twos, even occasional boundaries, simply by timing these defensive actions. Be on the balls of your feet so you can move late and quick, to respond when the bowler is off target.
If you get it wrong, you hear the sound and feel the sting of ball on flesh. Or you will recoil from the impact of ball on helmet. Or you will need to manage the pain of your compressed thumb against the handle. Or sense the break of bone. Or see your middle stump fly out of the ground.
In 1980, I could not cope with Imran and Le Roux. Certainly not on that pitch anyway. We also faced Lillee that year as the Australians warmed up for the Centenary Test. I couldn’t cope with him either. Not even close: caught Yallop, bowled Lillee for 0. In the second innings it was caught Marsh bowled Thomson for 7. A legion of better players than I went to their cricketing grave with Lillee and Thomson as the executioners on their headstone.
Ashley Mallett told me a story of being at the pub after the first day’s play in that match at Southampton, when a young bloke came up to him and asked how it had gone. ‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘not that I did much myself.’ He paid for his drinks and turned back to the lad who had asked the question: ‘Good workout for the fast bowlers, albeit against a pretty ordinary Hampshire team. The top-order batting was weak as piss,’ he added, ‘the number three a shocker for a first-class team.’ I was the young lad. I was also Hampshire’s number three.
One major issue that hounded me was the playing of the man not the ball. I was in awe of these guys. I tried to isolate the ball, god knows I did, but my mind beat me. And then beat me up. I tried visualisation. I saw a shrink—recommended by Bob Willis and Viv Richards—who used hypnosis. His name was Arthur ‘Two Sheds’ Jackson and he saw people at his home in North Sydney. Some nickname. But even Arthur couldn’t help. I sat in Viv’s chair but the magic stayed put. I had to face the fact that I was stuck with my perception of the game’s past, which insisted these guys were too good for me.
I searched for something present, something real. Reality is neither a memory of what has gone before, nor is it the future. Reality is the ball bowled there and then, but I couldn’t damn well grab reality.
I wish I could have had another crack a few years later, by which time I was helping out young cricketers with this sort of stuff. My ecstatic celebration upon reaching a hundred against Ambrose in 1994 was tempered by the realisation that Ambrose, who was busy taking 7 for 44, was another young kid’s nightmare. My conclusion is that you can train a mind but not change it.
To explain further: I thought that every ball Lillee bowled to me had my number on it, even when he came back with creaking joints to play for Northamptonshire. Roberts played against Hampshire for Leicestershire one season and I thought much the same about him. They weren’t all like that, probably they were the only two with such a hold on me. The rest became manageable—no doubt you become better equipped and less starstruck as you grow older.
Having said that, in 1991 Donald bowled me two balls so fast I must relate them. Chris Smith’s wife, Julie, was due with their first child so he refused to play in a
championship match at Portsmouth—refused! I opened the batting in his place and on the way to the middle asked Paul Terry which of us would take the first ball. He said he usually did but we could go left and right. I said fine and went left. Donald marked out his run to the right. I took guard and looked at the field. Very funny lads. Keith Piper, the Warwickshire keeper, and the slips were miles back. Like miles. I laughed. But there was no joke. The United Services ground at Portsmouth had a quick pitch and this one had a green tinge upon its granite-hard surface. There were four slips and a gully, a short leg, a leg gully and behind him a long leg. Andy Lloyd, the captain and a mate of mine, was at short point. I looked at him as if to say, ‘Hoho, me old mucker.’ He just winked, a pretty mean wink I should add, and then turned to give A.D. a final push before battle.
Well, the first ball came at my head with a ferocity I had not seen since Imran and Le Roux. It was like a guided missile and I was the target. I threw back my head and, by a whisker, avoided destruction. Piper leapt to gather the ball above his head and then jumped around as a man jumps on hot coals, before wringing his hands as a man who has burnt his fingers upon a hot plate. The slips loved it. Lloyd urged for more from this monster. Christ.
I thought, ‘I need time here.’ I walked towards Paul, who was not eager to talk but I insisted. I said I would leave the next ball alone, assuming it wasn’t straight, and we should run the bye because no way could Piper get it to the stumps in time to run us out. I added we might have more byes than runs by lunch. Paul neither liked the idea nor found the follow-up funny. He said we shouldn’t take the piss. I said, well, maybe not, but we should do all we could to piss them off.
After some choice lines from Lloyd based around ‘Get the fuck on with it’, I settled back into my stance. Jeeesus. The next ball was quicker and marginally better directed, this time at my throat.
As I began to throw back my head I sensed it was too late and my hands instinctively rose to protect my life. The ball brushed my right glove. ‘Too late’ . . . Piper flew high to his right but the ball arced a fraction in its flight, touching only his fingertips, and as he hit the ground so too did the ball—a few yards behind him. We ran. The umpire signalled bye. Shit. Paul played out the over. Now I was to face my old nemesis, Gladstone Small. It didn’t take him long. Stranded on the crease as he nipped one back off the seam, I was plumb in front. Given out for 0, although I actually made 1, sort of. The Warwickshire players began ahoopin’ and ahollerin’. Paul went on to make a hundred and never once ran a bye.
A Beautiful Game Page 19
