A significant book could be written about the history of race and cricket. Someone’s probably done it already, and without looking it up I’d guess that C.L.R. James the great West Indian socialist and writer about the game may have been the one. At the very least he’ll have serially passed comment on many of the relevant issues while he was alive. But it’s still a developing story. How sad that the only native Australian to have represented his country in recent times, Andrew Symonds, should have hit a brick wall with the game’s administrators in the way he’s done. How odd that so few British born people of Afro-Caribbean descent are currently even knocking on the door of the English team. And what a lesson to us that the effects of ‘apartheid’ still rumble on, forty years after John Arlott brought Basil D’Oliveira – a ‘coloured’ man - out of the South African cricketing wilderness eventually to play for England. You can’t overturn the consequences of evil politics overnight. Like cricket, that’s a long game.
One of the unexpected consequences is that so many white South Africans with cricket in their blood have made Britain their home – though for differing reasons. After D’Oliveira came Tony Greig, six and a half feet of blond aggressive intent, who rallied English cricket briefly before sailing on to Australia where he helped change the sport into something else, floodlights, pyjama clothing and all, during the late seventies and early eighties. Then there was Allan Lamb, who the town and county of Northampton got to know very well during the nineteen eighties: a diminutive, dashing, bristling batsman with a robust sense of humour. He teamed up with Ian Botham, and even now TV ads for British meat occasionally pop up using a ‘Beefy and Lamby’ strapline – a joke probably understood by a diminishing number of the audience. Then we had great hopes of Graeme Hick, a refugee from Zimbabwe. On his first showing in England with a young Zimbabwe team he scored two big double-hundreds. We believed that Hick’s powerful frame and broad bat would deliver a cascade of runs for England after his qualification. But by the time he’d qualified the fearlessness of youth had ebbed away, and although Hick played often for England, in the Test match arena he became famous for not delivering as it was hoped he might. In the contemporary side, there’s Pietersen of course. This time, as opposed to Tony Greig, the cricketer has left South Africa because he feared that racial bias against a white man might militate against selection for the country of his birth. Andrew Strauss too has as many South African credentials as English, although the trace of accent is now very slight. And now welcome Jonathan Trott, the latest recruit to the English Test team, another man of giant physical stature, one of whose forbears, Albert, played with distinction for both England and Australia in another age.
Whether Trott is a wise selection we’ll find out in less than a week’s time. He’s had a great season with the bat, and is said (well they would, wouldn’t they!) to have a great temperament. He used to bowl a bit of medium pace too, but as often seems to happen in England, this talent has been neglected recently. In his stead the selectors could have chosen Mark Ramprakash to play on his home ground. Like Hick his record in Test cricket (and Ramps last played some years ago) doesn’t measure up to his enormous talent, which in the last five years has simply taken apart anyone who’s bowled against him on the county circuit in a way without precedent in my lifetime. But the selectors in their wisdom have decided a leopard can’t change his spots. Trescothick, the other English batsman of massive talent, seems still too mentally fragile to respond to the call, so Trott it will be. Hot to Trott? Or on a bad trot? Pick your headline.
One has to wonder what subconscious messages have been sent to players by those choosing England teams in recent years. How is it that the three talented players mentioned above – Hick, Ramprakash and Trescothick – have all failed to perform for their England? Surely there must have been – must still be – a failure to nurture on the part of coaches and administrators? And when you add to that the current form of Monty Panesar, whose game seems to have suffered a terrible crisis of confidence, a pattern seems to be established. (Panesar has been picked for the Oval, but has picked up a mere handful of wickets this season against mediocre opposition at great cost.)
There must be the suspicion that ‘man management’ (itself a gender specific phrase) operates, has operated, at a very poor level in the England set-up. If you don’t fit the system, because of raw talent, or colour, (or sexual orientation?) or eccentricity, you don’t get support. Can that really be true?
Good luck to England on Thursday. They’re going to need it if the weather stays fair. They haven't necessarily given themselves the best chance.
