Andrew Flintoff consoles Brett Lee at Edgbaston in 2005. A wonderful moment at the end of a wonderful match.
The great Gilchrist, Straussed and Flintoffed at Trent Bridge, 2005. Interest around the UK was at fever pitch and this catch was replayed so often it became a part of everyone’s lives.
Michael Vaughan with the urn in the dressing room at the Oval—he says he was thinking, ‘Thank god for that!’
The toss in Brisbane at the start of the 2006–07 Ashes. Australia batted, Steve Harmison bowled the wide of all wides and Ricky Ponting set out his marker with a big, big hundred. There was a cruel beauty in the 5–0 revenge.
The King claims his 700th Test wicket at the MCG on Boxing Day, where else! This was another moment of magic to Andrew Strauss, who has been on the wrong end of a few. The photograph says it all.
Muttiah Muralitharan, Kumar Sangakkara and their national flag. Sri Lanka is a small island with a huge heart. These two mighty cricketers are in the pantheon of the game—one has 800 Test match wickets, the other 12,400 runs.
Something was funny—the day the Sydney Cricket Ground goes pink, 5 January 2010.
Our own Abbey Road. From left: George, Paul, Ringo and John—a rather more Fab Four than Tub, Binga, Heals and Nicko.
Michael Atherton and Mark Taylor: two highly regarded custodians of the game.
‘Out of my way, Nicko, there’s a demo to do here,’ says Michael Slater. We have plenty of laughs preparing to go on air each day.
With Geoffrey Boycott, both of us grumbling about another Vaughan tweet.
Constantia Uitsig in Cape Town. Jeff Thomson bowled here and Graeme Pollock batted. It was a special place, made more special by the landlords of the day, David and Marlene McCay.
The feisty and brilliant Virat Kohli, worth the admission money alone. Kohli is the most recent in the line of truly exceptional Indian batsmen—from Gavaskar, through Tendulkar to Kohli—whose batting evolved around the demands of the era in which they played.
Joe Root while making 256 against Pakistan at Old Trafford in July 2016. This superbly well-crafted innings makes me think he, too, will be one day be included among the elite.
Dale Steyn runs in . . . menace in motion.
A.B. de Villiers—genius in pink. A.B. leads a group of brilliant modern batsmen, each of whom is redefining movement, range and risk.
Two good men embrace: Mitchell Johnson and Ryan Harris, the architects of England’s fall from grace in the summer of 2013–14. Respected judges suggested they were as potent as Thomson and Lillee almost 40 years earlier.
Michael Clarke and Brendon McCullum walking out for the toss at the World Cup Final in 2015. Their words—at the service for Phillip Hughes and at the Cowdrey Lecture, respectively—gave cricket much to consider and to embrace.
The game goes back to work in Adelaide after the tragic loss of Phillip Hughes two weeks earlier. The 63 seconds of applause was heard around the world.
Martin Crowe at the MCG on the day of the World Cup final in late March 2015. It was the last time we saw him. The name lives on through his brother Jeff, who is now an international match referee. The Crowe family have given much of themselves to cricket; the game has been lucky to have them.
Since 2005, Chance to Shine has brought cricket to 3.5 million children who otherwise would not have played the game. ‘It’s not what kids can do for cricket but what cricket can do for kids,’ is the ethos around which we have raised millions of pounds to fund the programs that are taking cricket back into schools and communities. Few aspects of my life in the game have been more fulfilling.
When the last word of this book was written and the send key pressed, Leila and Kirsten breathed a sigh of relief and we took off to the sunshine in Greece, August 2016.
EPILOGUE
A beautiful game
Cricket is the most artistic of all games and, to me, the most beautiful—hence the title of this book. Cricket is difficult, frustrating and unfair, but the bounty of its rewards is plentiful. Players have a singular power to make or break the game, as does the behaviour of the weather. Matches are sometimes dull, and the amount of time taken in becoming so is a constant source of amazement to those who are not wedded to their charms. It is a game of vignettes, which give it layers, but these layers are not apparent to everyone. The expressions of the participants give it human drama but this, too, is subject to understanding.
Cricket is celebrated in verse and song and on canvas. It can be as brutal as it is balletic, as true as it can be false. Those who play it must take risks and, in so doing, know they may be betrayed. As I have discussed in an earlier chapter, it is surely why the writers came to the game, to wallow in these contradictions.
I find it aesthetically satisfying because it is a game of straight lines but one that still has a place for awkward angles and rugged edges. The perfect example of this among modern batsmen is Virat Kohli, who has made hundreds in all three forms of the game that both acknowledge and defy the textbooks. During the 2016 IPL, he played innings after innings that were worth the admission money alone. In the Test series between England and Sri Lanka that finished in June 2016, James Anderson bowled beautifully but with an idiosyncratic dip of his head as he released the ball. This certainly defied the textbooks but has not stopped him becoming England’s leading wicket-taker. These two cricketers happen to please my eye, both geometrically and artistically, which may be one and the same. They are confrontational characters, who express themselves in a direct manner because they are trying to master a devil of a game. They need the wisdom of Solomon and patience of Job, along with athleticism, skill and a keen eye for a ball. We can hardly blame them for an off day.
My time playing cricket coincided with a golden age. The 25 years between 1970 and 1995 featured an array of cricketing genius—of Sobers and Procter; Botham, Kapil, Imran and Hadlee; two Richards; Chappell, Pollock, Miandad, Tendulkar and Lara; Lillee, Thomson, Holding and Marshall; Wasim and Waqar; Knott and Healy; Warne and Muralitharan. It is reassuring to see some more of it about today.
Can genius be applied to sport? Of course it can, as easily as to anything else. Genius is mystical and beyond convention. Genius does not imply a player is the best, just that they have taken their sport to a previously uninhabited place. This is why genius in W.G. Grace’s day is every bit as relevant as in A.B. de Villiers’ day. Both have clearly taken their game out of its existing parameters. They are not comparable because the parameters are not comparable, but they set the bar of the moment and, if unable to improve upon it themselves, watch on as others surely do so. In Grace’s case it was a long time before anyone caught up, and I have already argued that we are still waiting for Bradman’s chaser. It could be that we wait forever for the man who reinvents the skills paraded by Warne and Muralitharan.
I have wondered about the spirit of the game, surely its greatest strength. There has been a lot of anger out there of late and an increasing amount of greed. The good guys are as good as they ever were but the less good have a loud voice, some of them in important positions of power. I like India at the head of the game but with that position comes a pastoral responsibility that cannot be ignored. Australia and England must encourage India to look after the game of cricket at large, not just the Indian interpretation of it.
Everybody should read, or listen to, Brendon McCullum’s compelling 2016 MCC Spirit of Cricket Lecture. McCullum’s adventurous brand of cricket won many admirers and there was genuine sadness when he retired from the game early in 2016. The lecture, given in the name of the widely respected Colin Cowdrey, was something else again. In it, he says that ‘cricket was meant to be a game, not a life or death struggle’, and he explains the root of an ethos that is at the heart of cricket’s enduring appeal:
I want to talk of the other really significant happening that affected my approach to the game. The events leading to it took place at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 25 November 2014. On that day, Phil Hughes suffered injuries t
hat were to prove fatal . . . Phil was a good man . . . The outpourings of grief that followed the tragedy were testimony to how much he was loved . . .
The way that Phil’s death affected what happened [to our Test series against Pakistan] didn’t go unnoticed by those who witnessed it. Cricinfo saw it this way: ‘The Kiwis were badly affected by the incident and didn’t even celebrate any of their achievements. A remarkable thing to note here is that they barely applauded a wicket. Consider this: just the two bouncers bowled today and no close-in fielders in front of the wicket! Takes some doing and still they won the game in four days to level the series 1–1 . . . full marks and hats off to the Kiwis for the spirit they have shown throughout the series. Certainly an example set for all the other sides to follow and act upon. Long live their attitude.’
The realisation of how we achieved the result through the manner of our play came sometime later. The team had drawn strength from one another and from [the highly regarded sports psychologist] Gilbert Enoka’s [theory of] ‘no consequences’ [that] brought a ‘joy of life’ in a cricketing sense that was richly ironic but, nevertheless, liberating. The big thing I took away from this Test is the way Phil’s death affected our mind-set and the way we played in the rest of the match. It was so strange, and yet it felt so right, that after Phil’s death we didn’t really care anymore about the result. Because nothing we could or couldn’t do on the field really mattered in comparison to what had happened to Phil. Our perspective changed completely for the rest of my time playing Test cricket for New Zealand, and we were a much better side as a result.
Many observers have said that we were playing the way it should be played; as gentlemen who respected the history of the game. People undoubtedly warmed to the fact that we no longer sledged the opposition.
We worked out what would work for us, based on the traits of being Kiwis. To try to be humble and hardworking and to enjoy what we were doing. It is vital that you understand that we were never trying to be ‘nice guys’. We were just trying to be authentic in how we acted, played the game and carried ourselves. For us, sledging in an abusive manner just didn’t fit with who we believed we had to be. It wasn’t authentic to being a New Zealander.
This is not the time to go through a microscopic examination of ‘what is sledging’ and to seek to define it. Everyone has a view of how the game should be played and everyone is entitled to their view—Jeff Thomson probably shouldn’t have called Colin Cowdrey ‘fatso’ and told him to ‘piss off’. But it’s a great story and Colin had broad shoulders from all accounts.
The truth is that cricket is unique—you spend a lot of time out there, ‘in the middle’. Humorous comments made in the heat of battle are gold. And when Colin Cowdrey’s funeral took place at Westminster Abbey (with 2500 people in attendance), it was Thommo who carried the Australian flag. Enough said.
In terms of our New Zealand side, we weren’t righteous in our stance and demanding that other teams follow our lead, but for us it was so good to play free of the shackles—to genuinely love the game again, to acknowledge and enjoy the opposition. And for me, when I pulled back the curtains in the morning, wherever we were, I smiled when the sky was blue and felt the same anticipation I did growing up in Dunedin.
And so, in reflecting on my fourteen years of international cricket, I again acknowledge my numerous failings and mistakes throughout my career. But I also celebrate that when I retired from international cricket the New Zealand team, through the contribution of everyone, had rediscovered its soul. It’s now a team that our country is proud of. Our followers know that New Zealand won’t win every game or be the world’s best team, but I think they are able to look at the team as a representation of our culture.
Right there is the spirit of cricket. It is with McCullum’s words resounding in my head that I say thank you to a beautiful game.
Love is lost
If I should go before the rest of you,
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone.
Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must,
Parting is hell.
But life goes on,
So . . . sing as well.
Joyce Grenfell
People come and go, places change. Cricket is a game made up of good souls; the bad ones can be counted on a single hand. It so happens that most of my closest influences and friends have not hung around for as long as I would have liked.
My father Peter, Malcolm Marshall, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, Peter Sainsbury, Richie Benaud and Martin Crowe are among the cricketers who most touched my life in the game. Constantia Uitsig in Cape Town was a ground on which I felt cricket’s unbridled spirit: when it was sold, a piece of the game went with it.
Given I have already devoted a part of this book to Marshall, the space here is for others. Mainly, these are the pieces I wrote after I heard of their passing, sharpened for the purposes of these reflections. I have written about Constanta Uitsig knowing that the man who created it, David McCay, is fighting a battle with cancer. I have not written about my father. Any cricket story I have to tell is because of him.
MARTIN CROWE, 1963–2016
‘Marty goes to rest’, first published on Cricinfo, 4 March 2016 Last night I dreamt about Martin Crowe. Fit, able, strong, gifted; bald, smiling, sick; angry, incisive, raw; modern, playful, intuitive. Then the dog barked and I awoke. Outside it was dark. A chill wind rustled the bare branches on the huge plane trees in the nearby park. For some inexplicable reason, I remembered our golf game on Waiheke Island, Christmas Eve 2002: Martin and Jeff together against Audrey, their mother, and me. She said we would win because the boys were bound to compete with one another more feverishly than with us. She was right. Such mighty competitors.
Then I looked at my phone, and the text. No. Oh no. The chill ripped through me.
Jeff said Martin had gone peacefully with Lorraine and Emma by his side: a beautiful wife, a beautiful daughter, the loves of his life. Jeff was thankful that the ‘brutal pain’ was over. We all must be.
Another text, this one from Michael Clarke expressing dismay and adding that Martin will already be talking technique with Phillip Hughes. Then Ian Botham, Wasim Akram and many more who are not so well known—all with a line of affection and appreciation. Brothers in blood, brothers in arms, brothers in cricket deeply shocked by the loss of one of their own so young, so vibrant, so alert.
I made tea and thought of that extraordinary piece of writing on Cricinfo, ‘The Masks We Wear’. In it, Martin spoke sympathetically of Jonathan Trott who, in a depressed state of mind, had returned home early from England’s tour of Australia. Martin said he had been in similarly confused territory himself at the start of his career. ‘Expectations were high . . . I cried a lot, moods ebbed and flowed, emotions ran hot. Then I found a mask and began to fake it until I made it.’
Oh tortured soul be free. Martin thought less of himself than we thought of him. By a distance. He battled his mind, beat up on his heart and yet, was always a beautiful man.
For me, an intense relationship began at the Parks in Oxford in 1981. I had played for MCC against the University and a kid with a Kiwi accent asked for a lift back to London. We talked cricket all the way home, throwing ideas at one another with youth’s abandon. He fancied a short-form game even then: the germ, of course, of Cricket Max. He spent that English summer at Lord’s, an overseas recruit to the MCC ground staff, and dreamt of a hundred there. Next time I saw his name, it was on the team sheet against Australia. Christ, the kid is up against Lillee and Thomson! He didn’t do much good but was hardly the lone ranger. Just nineteen years of age and hung out to dry.
We met again at Southampton in 1984. He struggled to 50 in a pretty ordinary Somerset side, who played a pretty ordinary county match against a pretty ordinary Hampshire side. We laughed about that since. Within a year, he was making hundreds in Test cricket and Hampshire were gun
ning for the championship. The game and its players never stand still. In the evening he told me about New Zealand pinot noir and suggested I drop the Graham Gooch impression and go back to an orthodox stance.
He really liked the orthodox. Right up to his passing, he urged the same from Ed Cowan and stuck around long enough to see it working. ‘Still head,’ he would say, ‘weight on the balls of your feet, balanced moves—sideways, forward and back.’ We spent hours on these things in the Indoor School at Lord’s—tinkering, toying. Wasim Akram thinks him the best batsman he bowled to. Most agree that a close-to-perfect technique and a great hunger for the game set him close to the pantheon but that self-doubt, linked to ever deeper analysis, denied him an unarguable place within it. I argue for his inclusion: few have achieved more and fewer still have given the game more. When the ICC brought him into the Hall of Fame, his joy was unbridled.
Cricket had been a long struggle. Not for lack of talent but for lingering suspicions, mistrusts and uncertainties. There were quarrels with colleagues, teammates and administration, then later with producers and heads of sport. He tired of these and wished for harmony. He was incandescent about the treatment of Ross Taylor, a friend and protégé, when the captaincy was taken from him. He said so publicly and for a while this influenced his judgement of Brendon McCullum. But McCullum always knew that the Crowe heart lay entrenched in the game and, specifically, in New Zealand’s interpretation of it. Unsurprisingly, Crowe could not help but come to admire the McCullum way.
Marty’s great pleasures came first from his two girls then from close friends, wine, food, golf, art, design, style. He turned up at our place in London before dawn one morning and, restless after the flight from Auckland, rearranged our bookshelves and rehung the pictures. The joint looked a whole lot better by breakfast.
A Beautiful Game Page 39
