After Lord's

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

In this edition of Round The Wicket we reflect on an extraordinary second Ashes Test. Michael takes you through the events of the five days and then Phil takes up the issue of the spirit of cricket (you will find the two of us in agreement), and the question of whether are not England are really all that entertaining.

Wallace Stevens thought there were Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. There are more than 13 ways of reviewing events at Lord’s, where Australia went two-up in a series that is frothing on the hob. But here is a baker’s dozen to be getting on with.

The spirit of the game

Some people make too much of it; others too little. Yet it exists. The fact that people are talking and writing about the events on Sunday as a scar on the game’s landscape underlines the point. Nobody bats an eyelid when thousands of football fans bellow obscenities, which they do every week, because that is how football people behave. It is a game which passes off disgusting behaviour as ‘passion’, which must be encouraged because it shows how much people care. If three members of Marylebone Cricket Club exchange words with two Australian cricketers, however, it is evidence of…oh, the usual things: elitism, ‘classism’, and even racism. The Australians were then applauded through the Long Room when they returned after lunch. Nobody mentioned that.

The tide of anger

My word, there was anger throughout the ground. Again, the wowsers were swift to strap on their pads. Spectators who are often chided for a lack of enthusiasm were given a shellacking for expressing themselves too forcibly. Booing is never a pleasant sound, but this was a highly unusual occurrence. A unique event, in fact. Personal disclosure: I joined in. As the Australians left the field for lunch I yelled a very rude phrase, and I’m happy to tell Guy Lavender, the MCC secretary, all about it should he make a call.

The appeal

Within the laws of the game, supervised by MCC, Jonny Bairstow was out, stumped. He had left his crease when the wicket was broken, so there was no doubting the decision. But he was marking his guard when Alex Carey released the ball, and both umpires were preparing to take up new positions at the end of the over. There was no attempt to seek an advantage because the batsman, like everybody else, imagined the over had been completed. It would have been wise had Pat Cummins rescinded the appeal, and reminded Bairstow that next time he would not be so tolerant. Wise, and expedient. The Australians have form for this kind of mullarkey – underarm bowling, sandpapering the ball, and blubbing on television. Cummins has a good reputation. He should have lived up to it.

The B word

Seven letters we might usefully put through bulk-erase. There is nothing new under the sun, and England’s transformation in the past year, while heartening, is not the greatest discovery since penicillin. They batted without thought in the second innings at Edgbaston, and the first innings at Lord’s was abysmal. What arrogance to imagine that you can belt high-class bowlers around the meadow, ‘grinning as if it were all an August Bank Holiday lark’. Foolish actions always have consequences, and they now find themselves two Tests down. Are they repentant? Not a bit of it. They’re going to do it again!

The saddest sight

James Anderson has given England great service. Over two decades of opening the bowling, which is the most arduous work a cricketer can do, he has taken 688 wickets in 181 Test matches. But his race is finally run. On the fourth morning, when Steve Smith drove him for three offside boundaries, he looked defeated. Normally the most accomplished of catchers, he also grassed two chances. The party’s over. All dreams must end.

The master

The Australians have had a few. Ray Lindwall, in Fred Trueman’s estimation, was ‘the king’. Keith Miller, his great mate, was, in the words of Jeff Thomson, every Australian cricketer’s favourite Australian cricketer. Thomson was, for three years, probably the fastest bowler who ever let a ball go, and his partnership with Dennis Lillee matched that of Lindwall and Miller. Lillee may have been the greatest fast bowler ever. Then came Glenn McGrath, fast-medium rather than lightning speed, but extraordinary. Now Cummins may be admitted to the pantheon. The best sight of the second Test was his over on the fourth afternoon which cut broke the England innings in two: Root caught at slip off a snorter, and Brook castled by one that held its line. It was great bowling by a champion fast bowler.

The ingenu

‘It’s a nice voice, and though it’s not exactly flat, she’ll need a little more than that to earn a living wage’. Noel Coward’s advice to Mrs Worthington may apply to Ollie Pope, the Surrey starlet. He’s a lovely batsman, particularly at the Oval, where he makes a century each time he pulls on his gloves. Yet he’s made only four hundreds in 38 Tests; a poor return. England have pushed him up to No 3, and he has not justified their trust. It’s time he did. No more buts, Mrs Worthington. Nuts, Mrs Worthington.

The boy wonder

Kevin Coyne’s song Good Boy is never far away when Zac Crawley is at the crease. ‘Good boy, good boy, head boy, good boy, good lad, well done, excellent…’ He’s head boy material alright. Tall, handsome, well turned out in blazer and slacks, a credit to Tonbridge, one of England’s finest schools. The trouble is, he bats in blazer and slacks. There are sparkling cover drives (well done! excellent!), and then there is the inevitable dismissal when he appears set for the day. He made 51 runs at Lord’s, which is the Crawley range. He averages 28 in 36 Tests, and that’s what he will continue to offer so long as he gets a game, which he will so long as England pick teams on the jolly good chap principle. The laws that apply to other players (trivial things like runs and wickets) clearly do not apply to him. He’s a delightful player in those blessed half hours when everything clicks. But it’s his ukelele playing which is currently keeping him in the team. That George Formby has ‘em in stitches.

The malcontent

Bairstow has not enjoyed his summer so far. Other than that 78 in the first dig at Birmingham, he has failed three times with the bat, been obliged to play the role of fall guy, and kept wicket poorly. If Edgbaston served as a reminder that he is not the best gloveman in the country then Lord’s proved beyond doubt that England have backed the wrong horse. Not that they will admit it. Their minds are made up, so we can look forward to more missed chances and stumpings, and many more byes. It affects the shape of the team in the field. First-class wicketkeepers give confidence to bowlers and to fielders. Bairstow, who sees jokes by appointment, and bridles at slights, has rarely looked grumpier.

The waffler

Who is the wretched person on the mic? ‘Welcome to Lord’s’ is about as much as spectators need. Instead we get badly-spoken sentences about every subject under the sun, with lectures on ‘tolerance’ leading the way. On the final day, as Eleanor Oldroyd, the fine radio and television presenter, was introduced to ring the five-minute bell, this berk referred to her as ‘they’! There she was, in real life, feminine and singular. What madness is this?

The riff-raff

As all lovers of Lord’s know, the Coronation lawn behind the Warner Stand is the place to visit at lunchtime. It was busy as ever this year, and there were some splendid picnics, which it was my pleasure to judge. There is never any nastiness, and there is usually a lot of fun to be had, as well as some jolly good wine. The Harris garden behind the pavilion is another matter. It attracts some dodgy characters, many of whom are clearly there to get pissed by three o’clock. It has become loud, and unpleasant.

The refuge

In all lives it often takes time to realise the virtues of familiar things. I’ve been watching Test cricket at Lord’s since 1975 (Tony Greig’s introduction as England captain, David Steele’s debut, John Arlott’s celebrated ‘freaker’), and it is only in the last decade that I’ve come to love the Allen Stand. It’s a little world in itself, being self-contained, with bar, food facilities and toilet. It offers a wonderful vista of the ground, and you tend to meet interesting people. Next year MCC begin the business of rebuilding the stand, and giving it an additional floor. The restoration might be ‘better’ but almost certainly the stand won’t be as good.

The winners

Australia won the Test, as they did at Edgbaston, by playing proper Test cricket. After all this tiresome talk of the B-word, and making cricket more ‘entertaining’, their batsmen either defended the ball, left it when necessary, or gave it a biff. The bowlers, who are significantly faster and sharper than England’s, made good the loss of Nathan Lyon, and their catching, though not faultless, was superior. They are a very good team, and their success is a victory for traditional cricket. At the end of a week when a daft report drawn up by zealots mocked the game’s traditions, it was good to see.

Michael Henderson

The Spirit of Cricket

It is obvious that there is a spirit in which a game is played. No system of law defines the way it is enacted. There is always tacit, as well as explicit, understanding. The law against driving 71 miles per hour on the motorway is, in one sense, every bit as exacting as the law which prohibits murder. But it would be absurd to treat them with equal severity. We recognize the difference in sentencing but also in the way we police the law.

The rule of law has a spirit and cricket’s compliment to itself – that the spirit of the game is so uniquely applicable that it merits a lecture series with that title – is unnecessary. Other sports, in fact, have a spirit. Footballers kick the ball out of play when a player is injured. Paulo di Canio once caught the ball, rather than head it into an empty net, because the goalkeeper was on the floor, injured. It’s not just cricket.

Which brings us to the Jonny Bairstow incident and the confusion we get when law and ethics are both in play. The writer to turn to here is Durkheim who pointed out that not everything which is contractual is in the contract. By the letter of the law, Bairstow was out but there is more to every law than the letter and this is where it gets complicated. Alex Carey did nothing wrong. He noticed Bairstow has a habit of wandering out of his crease at the end of an over and threw down the stumps when he did it again. There was no pause in his action.

Yet Bairstow has a good claim to say the ball was dead. Here is where we get murkier. Bairstow scratched his crease, as if to say he was marking the end of the over and it seems that he noticed the umpires moving from their set positions to find their place for the next over. There is nothing in the law that says the umpire moving signals that the ball is dead, but it is not unreasonable of Bairstow to make that assumption. The fact that neither of the umpires even saw the dismissal suggests that they thought the ball was dead. And if they thought it was dead, was it not dead? Well, not necessarily. The umpires can be wrong about whether the ball is dead or not and in this case they were. They unwittingly prompted Bairstow to move, which caused his dismissal.

There is no obvious answer here. My thought, on balance, is that Bairstow should have been called back. He thought the over was done and had reason to think it so. He wasn’t being simply naïve. He was misled by the umpires and would not have left his crease otherwise. So, it was out but not out. It would have been good to have called him back.

Entertainment and Results

The interviews he gives are by no means the most irritating thing about Zak Crawley but they are pretty irritating. Before the Lord’s Test, Crawley said something silly about sport. We are not, he declared, about results, we are about entertainment. Anyone who was hooked by the final day was hooked because they wanted a result. But on the Saturday my son and I endured a session of cricket that was the most boring I think I have ever seen. England banged it in short all session and Australia ducked out of the way. It is quite an irony, for the team that prides itself on entertaining, that my abiding memory of this Test match will be how boring they are. It turns out that, between the entertainment business and the results business, England are in neither.

On to Leeds

After all that, the really worrying thing is that Australia haven’t even played well yet. At Lord’s the visitors had by far the worse of the conditions. They didn’t bowl especially well and batted poorly on Saturday. They lost their spin bowler to injury. Of the players still available, only Khawaja has played to his full potential so far this series. Yet they won the game by a comfortable margin in the end and they are now 2 up with 3 to play. Let’s hope they don’t start playing well.  

Philip Collins