This chapter is dedicated to the thrill of fast bowling but the art of swing is, in itself, a fascination. Few bowlers have truly mastered it. Alan Knott insists Ian Botham is the best swing bowler he saw. All of India celebrates Kapil Dev, one of the game’s very best and most attractive cricketers. Modern Australia would sell the Mitchell Johnson–Ryan Harris combination that swung the ball at some ‘serious licks’—as West Indians like to say. Alastair Cook understandably throws James Anderson’s hat into the ring. Botham rejoices in the sorcerer’s skills displayed day in and day out by the boy from Burnley, who grew to be the man with more Test wickets than any Englishman.
Anderson is much admired by Sir Richard Hadlee, who knows a bit about this stuff. Hadlee’s performance at Brisbane in 1985 led to one of the game’s great fairytales, as New Zealand finally beat the great rival from across the Tasman on their home turf. He took 9 for 52 in the first innings and 6 more in the second. Superb hundreds from Martin Crowe and John Reid, as well as brilliant close catching, completed a near-flawless performance, which was written into the folklore of New Zealand cricket. Hadlee would almost certainly have taken all 10 in that first innings had he not caught Geoff Lawson—Australia’s number ten—off Vaughan Brown, running away to his right at mid-on. A quirk is that the match was Brown’s debut and that this wicket was the only one he took in his Test career. Lawson thought Hadlee ‘unplayable’ and rates his match performance among the best two or three he has seen from any fast bowler.
Walter Hadlee’s third cricketing son was a disciple of Dennis Lillee and a keen student of the game in general. He moved from cocky tearaway in the early 1970s to become a clinical assassin in the 1980s. He did so without compromising much pace, learning instead to conserve energy and play with minds. We saw a lot of him in county cricket. Trent Bridge became his second home, and the personal targets he set for himself each summer were a story in themselves, so frequently were they achieved. Alongside the mighty Clive Rice, Hadlee turned Nottinghamshire into a crack unit and championship winners.
Sir Richard is a tall man and from a shortish and controlled approach he reached the crease ramrod straight and beautifully balanced. The ball was released with the wrist set exactly behind the seam, from which point on it appeared to track its target. With an uncanny knack for length, he wasted few deliveries and nagged at weaknesses like a bitter spouse. If you made contact in defence the ball felt heavy, hard and unforgiving; if you didn’t it would nip and bite as if it didn’t much care for you.
On a pitch that offered movement and bounce, Hadlee may have been the most effective of them all. Only McGrath and Ambrose could match him for accuracy. Ambrose was a little quicker and bouncier still but didn’t move the ball around quite so much. McGrath was a more relentless examiner of human weakness, cruel in his ways. All three of these extraordinary bowlers were able to set up the enemy and then strike with a near-certain and dreaded conclusion. I have talked to fine batsmen who knew the sting was on but admit they were powerless to resist.
I have the three of them, and Roberts, just a tad behind Lillee, Marshall and Akram. Hadlee and McGrath were happiest in the waiting game, the one in which metronomic accuracy brought a detailed plan to fruition. Ambrose was the most explosive and on the days when the knees were up and the eyes trained in on their prey, I swear he bowled 10 miles per hour faster to take a heavy toll from irregularities in the pitch or vulnerability in the opponent. I think of two spells specifically: 7 for 1 (7 for 25 ultimately) against the Australians in Perth and 6 for 24 against England in Trinidad.
AND FINALLY . . .
Who said this?
‘There are a lot of tips about how to get good at fast bowling: hip drive, use of the left arm, flow of the run-up, good speed, strength at the crease, control, head still, energy going down. But you have to have that something else. Something that someone like Usain Bolt has over anybody.’
He is spot on so far.
‘Your whole body has to work in sync to get the ball down to the other side at maximum pace, so I need to make sure all my energy is behind the ball. That means my wrist needs to be behind the ball. An easy way to tell is, am I landing it on the seam or am I missing the seam?’
Bingo.
‘The pitch doesn’t matter at all. I prefer bowling on low, slow wickets like in India, as opposed to bowling at the WACA, where there is big pace and bounce. I know my economy rate will be low; I have the possibility of the ball reversing; it will squat; I can bowl those fast cutters; I can bowl straighter lines. Maybe at the WACA you have to bowl slightly outside off stump. The difference between a good fast bowler and a brilliant fast bowler is the wickets column.’
I would have bet on Marshall saying this had I not read it elsewhere. It is a fascinating interview with Dale Steyn—who is the best fast bowler still playing and one of the few genuinely great ones ever—by Nagraj Gollapudi on Cricinfo. There is much of Marshall in Steyn: the pace through the air, the late movement, the lovely off-stump line, the wicked bouncer. His record compares; his strike rate alone is close to incomparable.
Another question to Steyn. ‘What’s the difference between good and great?’
‘Only when you retire.’
‘Why?’
‘While you are playing, one day you can be great and the next you can be absolute shit. Fast bowling is a battle. I have run in and bowled a heap of poo and the guy has hit it straight to cover. At other times I have bowled the spell of my life and I just can’t find the edge.’
And that, of course, is the game in a nutshell.
Yes, fast bowlers are gold.
CHAPTER 9
When spin meets glove
‘WELL BOWLED, DELL’; ‘THANKS, MATEY’
In 1984, Hampshire played Kent at Canterbury. The match was badly affected by weather and not much more than half of the last day remained when the captains got together in the hope of agreeing upon a formula for a conclusion. Kent had been 179 for 4 on the first day when the rain came. Over the ensuing 36 hours or so it crept under the covers and now the pitch was wet, which made the equation difficult. Nick Pocock came back to our dressing room chirpy as a morning’s lark. He had persuaded Chris Tavaré to declare the Kent first innings and forfeit the second. In turn, he would forfeit Hampshire’s first innings and agree to chase the 179 already on the board in the 59 overs that remained. ‘Easy,’ Pocock said to us, unaware that the poker-faced Kent captain had needed no persuading.
David Turner asked Nick if he had ever faced Derek Underwood on a wet pitch. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but the plan is simple: we block Deadly and get them off Alderman and Ellison at the other end.’ Trevor Jesty asked if he knew why he was called Deadly, to which Nick answered that he did, and then Trevor asked if he had ever tried blocking this Deadly on a turning pitch. ‘Er, no,’ he answered, ‘but it can’t be so difficult that we don’t make 180 off the others. I mean, come on, lads!’
Underwood was in the blocks for the fifth over. Our score was 13 for no wicket. He bowled a maiden in which Paul Terry played every ball safely in the middle of the bat. ‘See,’ said Nick in the dressing room, ‘a piece of piss.’ The next over bowled by Terry Alderman was a maiden too. At the end of the next over, bowled by Underwood, the score was 13 for 3.
Chris Smith played forward to the first ball, which ripped some of the wet surface out by its roots and caught the shoulder of his bat on the way through to Alderman at first slip. I took guard next and replaced the divot. The close field was five strong: two slips, gully, silly point and forward short leg. I figured the best thing was to play back. The ball went past my chest and was taken by Alan Knott at his shoulder height. He rode the alarming bounce of this ball as if he had done it all his life, which he had. No gloves sounded softer and none looked safer than Knotty’s. I now had first-hand experience of this genius, a couple of feet behind me. Awesome. ‘Well bowled, Dell,’ said the great stumper. ‘Thanks, matey,’ said the great bowler, the two of them in perfect harmony. Knott
and Underwood, Underwood and Knott: sure as cheese and wine; funny as Morecambe and Wise; prolific as Lennon and McCartney.
The third ball of the over hit the splice of my bat, heavy and hard. The thing about Underwood was the speed of the ball—almost medium pace and spinning like a top, which gave it the impression of something deadly—thus Deadly. That, and the relentless accuracy. People said he cut the ball but he didn’t really, he spun it at a cutter’s pace. The fourth ball of this second over was really evil. Spitting with intent, it attacked the thumb of my right glove, tearing it away from the handle of the bat before it carried on an inevitable path to the poker-faced captain at second slip. He threw it up like a child flicks a Smartie to its lips.
I just made it back to the dressing room to look out from the balcony and see Jesty inch forward to another one of these absurd deliveries only to find his gloves in the way of a ball that seemed programmed to travel from hand to pitch and on to slip. It was a kind of magic: an evil, irresistible magic. The first over to Paul had been a sighter, with the seam up. First take aim. Then fire. His second killed off the match.
Jesty returned to the dressing room and said, ‘I mean, “Come on, lads, it can’t be so difficult”? Yeah, right, fuck me!’ At exactly this moment Nick was taking guard and proceeded to reverse-sweep his way to 17, until Deadly rumbled him with the famous quicker ball, an inswinger that zeroed in on its target as if propelled by machine. Nick’s 17 was the top score by plenty. We made 56: a miracle. Underwood had 7 for 21; Richard Ellison 3 for 9. You had to laugh. What an experience. I remembered Barry Richards, the best batsman in the world at the time, saying that Underwood bowled them out for next to nothing on a bone-dry and dusting pitch at Gillingham. He said Deadly got 7 for 18 and then he added, ‘God knows how we got the 18.’ That day, Hampshire was bowled out for 58, with Richards, unlike us.
Underwood was a freak, perhaps the best slow bowler on a bad pitch who ever lived. It was almost comical to see this high-class sportsman—whose ten-to-two feet suggested a complete absence of athleticism—bamboozle everyone. He was a brave cricketer, as witnessed when he acted as nightwatchman in the days before the helmet and was frequently photographed in mid-air avoiding another 90-mile-per-hour missile: Deadly never said a bad word to, or about, anyone but, boy, did they bomb him. Revenge, I suppose, for previous embarrassments.
Knotty says he was the best England bowler he kept to. They had started together playing schools cricket, Underwood’s dad driving them around the county. The affection and appreciation was mutual. Deadly reckoned Knotty could read his mind and loved his mate’s input. For all the innate skill and the repeated action, there was an insecurity about Underwood that surprised even Knott.
There is an apocryphal story about Brian ‘Tonker’ Taylor, the Essex keeper, baffled by the young Underwood when they played together for T.N. Pearce’s XI at Scarborough. The first ball of Underwood’s first over spun past the bat and kept going past Tonker’s gloves. The next ball did exactly the same. The third ball was the quick one, which missed leg stump by a fraction. Tonker, by now well confused and still floundering around off stump, waved goodbye to the third consecutive four byes.
‘Deadly,’ exclaimed Tonker in east London tones, ‘they tell me you’re a world-beater. You see these gloves of mine? . . . You fuckin’ hit ’em.’ Underwood saw the funny side of Tonker’s limited skills but later confessed that he had wished Knotty had been around to tidy up for him on a day of first impressions.
Kent has been fortunate with stumpers. Hubble, Ames, Levett, Evans, Knott, Downton, Jones, to name a few. William ‘Hopper’ Levett was a tremendous character, who mainly stood in for Les Ames when he was away with England. Hopper was in the pub one night, hard on the hops he farmed, when the landlord whispered that a wireless report indicated Ames was sick and that Hopper might be called up the next day. Hopper had heard such stories turn to dust before and decided to drink on. Come the morning, come the call up. Worse for wear, Hopper moved not a muscle when the first ball of the day was left alone by the batsman, and then left alone by Hopper too, as it shot past his right shoulder. The slips looked on in shock as the match began with four byes. Next ball, the batsman played and missed and, again, Hopper remained motionless in his crouching position as the ball whistled between him and first slip for four more. The third ball was down the leg side and the batsman played the most delicate of leg glances. The ball flew towards fine leg only to be intercepted by the flying wicketkeeper who, with body horizontal and left arm at full stretch, pulled off a blinder of a catch. Hopper came up with the ball to find himself surrounded by astonished teammates. ‘Not bad for the first ball of the morning, eh lads,’ he said. It is a hackneyed tale but stands the test of time. Most cricket stories do.
Knotty barely had a drink in his life, save a small celebratory glass of white wine. His idiosyncrasies were the stuff of legend, as was his adherence to health, wellbeing and practice. On tours, he tended to room with Boycott—two early-tobedders together—but even Boycott was startled by Knott’s dawn routine. To us outsiders, Knott was just the nicest man and most generously spirited opponent.
Above everything, though, were the hints of genius. Boycott says that in Australia in 1970–71 they didn’t see him drop a single ball until the first morning of the Seventh Test, and that the moment was greeted with amazement by all and sundry, not least the Australians. To this day, Jeff Thomson talks about Knott’s guts against the fastest bowling and about the innovative and infuriating shots he played—notably the uppercut—in 1974–75. As the others were being mown down by Lillee and Thomson, Knott and Greig did all they could to stitch the wounds. Knotty ‘drove us nuts’, says Thommo. He drove us nuts too. At Bournemouth, we watched in awe as he went down on one knee to sweep Marshall for six. Neither before nor since had we seen such madness make for such brilliance. Marshall smiled and applauded. Everyone loved Knotty.
Dark, neat, lithe, fast-eyed and fleet-footed, he was as chirpy as Godfrey Evans before him but not so extroverted. He had a buoyancy that lifted the team through challenging passages of play and an air of optimism that made even the impossible seem likely. His glove work was economical, his footwork accurate. He taught himself the art of diving safely, so that the ball stayed in the glove, and on occasions his acrobatics were heart-stopping in their brilliance. But it was standing up to the wicket to Underwood that he shone above all others. He took a magnificent catch that day at Canterbury, poaching the rearing and kicking ball with improbable serenity. For a split second, it seemed as if the thing had melted away.
‘BOWLED, SHAANE’
‘He’s done it,’ said Benaud on the Beeb, and with that Shane Warne’s career was launched into the stratosphere. People had suggested he would be good, though I don’t suppose anyone thought he would be quite so damn good as he turned out. Right at the beginning, Martin Crowe said Warne was different because ‘He turns it across you, from outside leg to off, rather than from middle and off which is more typical of a leg spinner.’ Crowe was a fan. We all were. The show captivated us.
The truest way to judge the impact made by a sportsman is to watch the tactical response of the opposition. So concerned was Sachin Tendulkar that he disappeared for a full week of his life before the visit by the Australians in 1998. He was where no one could find him, preparing for Warne: a battle thrillingly won by the Indian. Warne has always said that Tendulkar in India in 1998 was the one batsman for whom the Australian team had no answer, other than to resort to an off-stump line, a decent length and hope. He might have mentioned the white handkerchief he waved in front of Kevin Pietersen during the first innings at Adelaide in 2006–07. Mind you, he worked that one out. In the second innings, Warne bowled Pietersen round his legs, which started the rot. A few hours later, the Australians had bullied their way to one of the great Test-match wins of all time.
Back to 1993. England were rooted from the minute Warne bowled that Gatting ball. ‘He’s done it’ might just as well have
been ‘He’s done them’. No one ball has created a legend in the way that did. It must be up there with Eric Hollies bowling Bradman for a second ball duck in his last Test innings at the Oval in 1948 as the single most replayed moment in cricket history.
Having said that, Warne bowled a bunch of other deliveries that toyed with the minds of opposing dressing rooms. The flipper to Alec Stewart in Brisbane was no less excruciating for Stewart than the Gatting ball was for Gatt. A group of England players sat on a television platform above the sightscreen at the old Gabba after the Stewart ball and tried to work it out. They kept a close eye on the bloke who delivered it too. I know, because I sat with them. Everything Warne did was mesmerising, which was part of the trick. The ego, the smarts, the self-awareness and self-confidence, the imposition and the theatre were all a part of the package. It was not that each ball was so hard to pick, more that the ball you picked was wrapped up in magic. ‘It’s not getting it there that counts,’ he likes to say, ‘any muppet can get it there. It’s how it gets there and then what happens when it arrives.’ Exactly.
There is much that surprises about Warne but first up is his unconditional love of cricket. To Warne, the chase of bat and ball is more than a game. It is a science—and it is art, theatre and war. In turn, Warne is soldier, scientist, artist, actor and entertainer. Cricket is his serious responsibility and a journey that will take him through his life. You can hear the passion for it in his commentary.
In 2003, he was found to have taken a diuretic, a banned substance. The punishment was a year’s ban from the game, which did not go to waste. He found an indoor cricket school happy to open its doors for an hour each morning between six and seven o’clock, at which point the cleaners arrived and he had to disappear. Usually he went alone and bowled at a handkerchief but I was staying a week with him in Melbourne and he suggested I come and bat. I had never played against him and never would, so this was an opportunity not to be missed. He began bowling seam up, not bad either. Then he rolled a few leggies of little consequence except for their high bounce, which was the norm on the concrete base of most indoor playing areas. Then he set me challenges—block an over, slog an over, six to win, 12 to win, etc. Then he said: ‘Right, you ready for the real thing?’ I was ready all right and shall not forget it.
A Beautiful Game Page 23
