This is by way of an introduction to the intriguing chess-like sport of cricket (the game of 'the flannelled fool'), and my recollection of events during the two years I represented VI in cricket - 1971 & 1972 - which will follow in Part 2.
just another game?
“With those
little pals of mine,
Ramadhin and
Valentine!”
These are the most memorable lines of a lovely little ditty
titled ‘Cricket, Lovely Cricket.’ Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts), a West
Indian, had composed it on the day of a famous victory. Thus were immortalised two West Indian cricket bowlers,
unplayable spinners Ramadhin and Valentine. On 29 June 1950 the
duo spun their team to an emphatic first ever victory over England in Test
Cricket, in England. The extraordinary celebrations by the Caribbean fans on
that day continued to Piccadilly Circus, giving birth to the legend of the
Calypso Cricketers from West Indies.
If success in cricket was to be determined merely by exotic and
flamboyant names, then none could possibly best the West Indians. They had
Frank Mortimer Maglinne Worrell, Clyde Leopold Walcott and Everton de Courcey
Weekes who were the famous 3W’s. Then there were George Headley, Garfield St.
Auburn Sobers, (CLICK HERE for his six 6's) Rohan Bholalall Kanhai, Wesley Winfield Hall, Charles
Christopher Griffith, Cuthbert Gordon Greenidge, Roy Clifton Fredericks, Isaac
Vivian Alexander Richards, Lawrence George Rowe, Alvin Isaac Kallicharan,
Anderson Montgomery Everton Roberts, Michael Anthony Holding, Curtly Elconn
Lynwall Ambrose, and more, all outstanding, brilliant cricketers. The West
Indians brought with them a brand of cricket never seen before. Macho, style,
panache, power and flamboyance were added to pure unadulterated passion and joy
for the game. Elquemodo Tonito Willet was not quite in the same class of test
cricketers as the others but deserved to be knighted just for that name!
Before this, much of cricket centered around an Australian
batting genius, Sir Donald Bradman. CLICK HERE for a You Tube video on him. ‘The Don’ retired from cricket with an
incredible batting average of 99.94 from a mere eighty innings. In 1948, age
forty, Bradman stepped out on to the Oval pitch in London for his last Test
innings. He needed to score only four runs to achieve a perfect 100 Test
batting average, but was undone for a score of nought, out to a magical googly,
the ‘wrong un’ bowled by an Englishmen, Eric Hollies. God knew what he was
doing mate! Some years later, Bradman, a man of impeccable honesty, great
stature and integrity, set the record straight. He credited Hollies with a very
fine piece of bowling effort. Bradman scotched speculation that he had been
temporarily blinded by his own tears from the standing ovation he had been
given by the largely English crowd.
English cricketing pride was eclipsed for many a year until
the emergence of the un-English batting styles of Ted Dexter, Tom Graveny, Tony
Grieg and David Gower. But few could match the combative, never-say-die
talismanic Ian Terence Botham. ‘Beefy Botham’ single-handedly destroyed
Australia at Headingley and Edgbaston in 1981. But you should not forget lefty
Eddie Paynter in that infamous body-line series in Australia in 1932/33.
Paynter, hospitalised in Brisbane with high fever, was recalled and forced to
bat and managed to score the winning run with a six!
From South Africa came the 1948 story of ‘Cometh the hour, Cometh
the man.’ Last man Cliff Gladwin, a bowler, came in to bat when all seemed
lost. Gladwin exhibited a degree of
coolness and gutsiness not often seen in tail-enders. He managed to stick
around to see the last of twelve runs scored as England achieved an unlikely
victory.
Cricket was given a shot in the arm with the emergence of the
wristy stylish batsmen and cunning bowlers from Pakistan and India. Test
cricket became a truly international sport. The spin quartet of Eripalli
Prasanna, Bishan Singh Bedi, Srinivasa Raghavan Venkataraghavan and Bhagwat
Subramanya Chandrasekhar was legendary.
But public imagination was captivated by the googly spinning genius of Chandrasekhar and his polio-withered right arm. Chandra brought a new
dimension to the art of spin bowling delivered at fast-medium pace! As great a
batsman as IVA Richards spoke of his fear of Chandra.
No less a wily foxy than Oz captain Ian Chappell reckoned
Prasanna was the best off -spin bowler he had ever faced. Prasanna was reputed
to have employed black-magic to ‘pull back’ a ball in full flight. Sunil
Gavaskar was the greatest ever opening batsman in the history of cricket. His portly
brother-in-law Gundappa Vishwanath’s wristy elegance and crunching square cuts were unmatched anywhere.
Pakistan brought with them the mystique of the magical Mussulman.
Was there ever a group of masterclass batsmen of the calibre of the ‘Little
Master’ Hanif Mohammad, Mushtaq Mohammad, the explosive Majid Khan or all
rounder Asif Iqbal. But for sheer style, panache, verve, grace, artistry and
elegance there was Zaheer Abbas, the ‘Asian Don Bradman.’ Then there was the
spin wizardry of the goateed Abdul Qadir who looked every inch a magician. He
did pull bunnies - googlies, sliders, leg spin, drifters - out of the back of
his hand.
But our story really begins with the 2W’s from Pakistan, Waqar Younis and Waseem Akram. Neither had
the pace of legends Dennis Lillee or
Michael Holding. Yet they were the main protagonists in defeating England 2-1
in the 1992 test series. There are only four priorities for Indians and
Pakistanis when playing a cricket test match against England. First and second
were to make at least one appearance at the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC)
grounds at Lords in St. John’s Woods, London, considered the home of cricket
and score a hundred there. Third, to snatch five wickets in an innings. And
fourth, to defeat England in a test series in England.
Surprisingly the 2W’s were not congratulated for their fine
efforts by the normally sporting English. Instead, they were greeted with such
hostility and acrimony as they could never have imagined.
The 2 W’s had perfected a new style of bowling which few had
encountered before - the fine art of ‘Reverse Swing’ bowling. Before them, the demon pace bowler Imran Khan
had experimented with it, but success was sporadic. The bowler would first
dampen one side of a fairly well-used cricket ball with sweat from his
forehead. The other side of the ball would be polished smooth by rubbing it
vigorously on cricket pants. These two actions are perfectly legal in cricket.
When speared in with a well-disguised bowling action, the well-primed ball would move
alarmingly towards the batsmen and stumps after pitching. Even the very best
Test batsmen found it difficult to cope with Reverse Swing bowling. Many of the
best in cricket could not bowl it!
The entire English establishment, players, officials and the
Press then decided the Pakistanis had done something that was ‘not quite
cricket.’ This was only just so short of calling the Pakistanis cheats to their
face. And many did openly call them that. Waseem Akram, a genuine all-rounder
with over four hundreds Test wickets to his credit was of course the greater of
the 2W’s. But Waqar Younis was the genius at reverse swing.
For many years prior to this, Australian and English teams
would return from defeats in India and Pakistan claiming that sub-continent
umpires, as a matter of culture, cheated. I watched an English test umpire give
the last man out in a crucial Pakistan vs England test match circa 1983. The
bat had been nowhere near the ball. Although the faux pas was noted in the
national dailies no one accused the English umpire of cheating!
The frightening success of the 2W’s was often met with cocked
eyebrows, winking of eyes and shaking of heads by the English establishment.
The 2005-2006 Ashes series between Australia and England
produced some of the most scintillating, pulsating and competitive test cricket
in the history of the game. It had everything you could ask for in sports. I had
watched what was compulsive viewing on Astro pay-TV channel from Kuala Lumpur.
On paper, man for man, Australia should have white-washed
England 5-0 in the series. This they only managed later in the return series in
Australia in 2006. Of sportsmanship,
Michael Vaughan, Freddy Flintoff, Ashley Giles, Simon Jones and Matthew Hoggard
from England were outstanding. They were a great credit to the game. The
Aussies looked shocked and bitter in defeat. In bowling Damien Martyn, Ashley
Giles bowled the ball of the series which had swung left-right-left as though
possessed by spirits. This was the left-hander’s equivalent of Shane Warne’s
‘Gatting Ball' for which there is no known defence! CLICK HERE for the 'Gatting Ball of the Century' and HERE for the 'Giles Ball.'
As expected, the Australians steam-rolled the English in the
first match. The series was actually won and lost during the second test match.
Three factors emerged as the main reasons England then went on to win the
series 2-1.
First, Australian captain Ricky Ponting won the toss and made
the unpardonable and biggest mistake of his career by asking England to bat.
Second, Michael Vaughan’s captaincy then and throughout the series was
outstanding. His field placing, change of bowlers and over-all game strategy
made Ponting look amateurish and clueless. Ponting retired from all forms of cricket in 2013, and is one of the greatest run accumulators in the history of the game. The 2005-2006 Ashes series would have been a defining moment
in his career.
But it was the third factor that made all the difference.
Suddenly the English fast bowlers, mainly Simon Jones, but Hoggard and Flintoff
too, started to produce a bit of Abracadabra, magic. The cricket ball began to
Reverse Swing! The Australians were unable to cope with this mumbo-jumbo voodoo
trickery for the rest of the series and capitulated like a pack of cards.
Did we hear of English bowlers illegally unpicking the seam of
the ball or the establishment accuse their fellow countrymen of cheating? Nary
a word. Overnight, the ‘Art of Pakistani 2W’s Cheating’ metamorphosed into a
very respectable and honoured skill, an English science!
An encore to this strange story of ‘Reverse Swing’ bowling
was enacted in England later in 2006 when they played Pakistan in a test
series. Shockingly, the fourth test match at the Oval in London was for the
first time in the history of the game, awarded by default to England. The
Pakistan team had refused to take the field after being docked five runs for alleged
‘ball tampering’ by a ‘neutral’ umpire from Australian, Darrel Hair. He made it
look as though the Pakistanis were once again up to their old didgeridoo tricks
of laying the grounds for "cheating" with Reverse Swing bowling.
Hair was also involved in another controversy some years earlier.
He had faulted Sri Lankan Muralitharan for an illegal bowling action.
Embarrassingly for Hair, the international governing board of cricket had just
before that match given Murali the all clear. Whether intended or not, this enabled Shane
Warne, an Australian, to take the lead in the league of most wickets taken by a
test bowler in his career.
An inquiry was held by the world’s cricket governing board.
The Pakistan captain was fined for failing to take the field. But it was that
other finding that one should appreciate, for the conspicuous deafening silence
that followed it. Independent Match Referee Ranjan Madugalle concluded that the
condition of the ball was as could be expected of one that had been used for
the duration of that game. The Pakistanis were absolutely exonerated of any and
all charges of ball tampering or
cheating!
So, what then prompted umpire Darrel Hair to call as he did?
None of the distinguished panel of live match commentators had picked up any
untoward behaviour by the Pakistan players. Frame by frame replay of events
recorded by several cameras dotted around the stadium revealed nothing illegal taking place. Hair’s
conduct after the event when it turned internationally acrimonious became questionable. He wrote in offering to
tender his resignation for compensation of US$ 500,000 and then withdrew that
letter.
If you think cricket is just a sport, then think again. Think
back to the 1932/33 ‘Bodyline Series.’ England captain Douglas Jardine was
possessed of a ruthless streak, a no-holds-barred ambition to win.
The English were accused of bowling beamers and bouncers with the deliberate
intention of causing serious injury to the Australian batsmen. Jardine was
ordered to rein in his ‘quickies’ like Harold Larwood who had targeted Don
Bradman’s head.
Australia threatened to pull out of the Commonwealth!
