Twenty-twenty vision?

The sun is high in the sky, the neighbours are in their garden playing songs from Mamma Mia at blood-from-the-ears volume, and the smell of barbequed meat is overpowering the subtler perfumes of early summer. British Members of Parliament are eagerly awaiting the moment to forsake Westminster for the ill-gotten delights of their second homes in the suburbs. It’s time for English 20/20. Some drink to remember, some drink to forget.

In one of the higher scoring games of the week, Surrey dealt comprehensively with last year’s 20/20 competition winners, Middlesex. They did so by constructing a single major partnership around Usman Afzaal and Mark Ramprakash which carried the Brown Caps (Oh, puh-lease!) to 186 in their twenty overs. This proved far too difficult a target for a Middlesex side reduced by players lost to international cricket and by defection.

Afzaal, a one-time England prospect, who actually played a game or two for the international side without distinction, looked ugly but was highly effective. The elusive Ramprakash, now in his fortieth year, looked in sublime touch and reminded us for the umpteenth time that on technique he could have been one of the all-time greats. The two of them ran like greyhounds when they couldn’t find the boundaries and showed that even in this truncated form of the game fitness is a real issue.

Pinch yourself. 186. In twenty overs. That’s a rate of more than nine runs an over. Transatlantic readers may not grasp the significance of this, but if you’d suggested to cricket-lovers even a generation ago that such a run-rate was achievable, they’d have questioned your sanity. When I was a kid two an over throughout the day wasn’t uncommon. I’ve seen days of Test cricket when not many more than 186 were scored. And in one way, so much the worse for such occasions – that wasn’t entertainment, it was self-indulgence, and disdain for the paying public.

Of course, entertainment – or at least – satisfaction isn’t necessarily guaranteed even in 20/20. There are always going to be ‘dead’ games of cricket. It’s written into the structure of the game. Sometimes one side will be overwhelmingly superior, and will show it early in the contest. Or (more rarely these days) the bat will excel over the ball to such an extent that no result is possible. Or the weather will prevent a result. Quite commonly one day (or three hour) matches will display the former fault too. What keeps longer games of cricket going in these sort of circumstances are the little battles between batsmen and bowlers, which may have some influence on events in three, six or eighteen months time. The individuals are working each other out. The shorter the game, the less opportunity there is for this. When it’s over, it really is over. There’s very little left to play for. But then why stay at a soccer match if your team’s 5-0 down at half-time? All sport can be boring.

It’s often said that 20/20 is a batsman’s game i.e. the often substantial crowds (and the numbers attending are holding up well, though let’s review that again at the end of the season!) come to see the ball being mightily dispatched. But actually it’s the bowlers who are the point of interest on television, where the ploys they use to maintain a fig-leaf of respectability in the midst of sporting carnage are fascinating. Sadly, the subtleties are hidden from those sitting out on the ring, sweltering inside their Elvis costumes, cans of XXXX in their hands.

There’s a guy playing for Middlesex, a South African by the name of Tyron Henderson, who’s taken more 20/20 wickets than anyone else. He has an extremely wide range of deliveries at his disposal, and the batsman never has a clue what’s coming next. He’ll bowl from close to the stumps, from as wide out as he’s allowed, from 23 rather than 22 yards. One ball will be fired in at over 80 mph, the next will be a slow leg break. He’ll try a slow-speed bouncer, and then with the next ball attempt to break the batsman’s toes. It’s great to watch, but even then it can all go horribly wrong. In Middlesex’s next match later in the week, Henderson’s allotted four overs cost him 56 runs without a wicket.

There are other things to admire too. The constantly improving standards of fielding. The way spin bowling is coming back into its own. But one thing really takes getting used to. The players look as if they can’t believe their luck to be paid for doing so little, and in these value-for-money recessional days that sticks in my craw. Sport is surely a little about suffering, and if we the public perceive there’s reward without pain, 20/20 (and ultimately all forms of the game) may go the way of snooker. And I imagine even fewer Americans have heard of that than have heard about cricket.

Making a meal of it

As far as this summer’s Great Cricketing Menu is concerned, cooked up by the English Cricket Board, we’re almost through the first course – the desultory Test and one-day matches with the West Indies. It looked appetising and turned out to be underdone. Next comes the rather fishy 20 overs World Cup (for almost a whole month all major cricket in England is going to be played in this most limited of limited overs’ format. I wonder how many of us will finish what’s set upon our plates?) Thereafter follows the sumptuous main course – the Test series versus Australia, and lastly what may well be a tedious dessert – seven one day internationals against the same opponents. If we’re well and truly on the losing side by then, expect a lot of sickness and vomiting.

Viewed from a distance, my American friends, this intense sporting rivalry between England and Australia must seem parochial and perhaps even a trifle forced. It’s not only about cricket, although it is chiefly so. Equally high passions can be induced on the rugby field. In swimming the Australians assume they’re much better – which they are. In track and field and field hockey the two nations are evenly matched. In tennis, we’re both weak – the Australians surprisingly so. In football (soccer) the Aussies are also-rans in world terms. They always have been bar a brief flourishing about ten years ago.

The shameful thing is – there are three times as many of us as there are of them, which tells you a lot about attitudes to sport in the two nations, and perhaps also a little about the respective climates. It’s rather slack stereotyping to say that the sunshine makes Australians outgoing and ebullient, and that our cold and rain makes us huddled and withdrawn, but there often appears to be an element of truth in that. The average Australian sportsperson isn’t given to understatement in respect of their own superhuman potential and the incredible goofiness of the opponent. We English have been known to be unconvincing once out of our own specialist field of self-deprecation. There may be interesting questions of genetics to be discussed – the convict issue is one which is always likely to surface at moments of high alcohol consumption. But in fact both countries have benefited from immigration. In this Australian team there’s a Hauritz and a Hilfenhaus, and Di Venuto and Dimattina have, amongst many others, provided a touch of the exotic to the sound of their domestic cricket rosters. Often it’s only people of gumption who get up to move to the opposite end of the world. And you can’t go much further than Australia. Culturally of course the poor dears will always be challenged, for this precise reason – which is why it matters so desperately to excel at sport, I guess. Loss of empire is usually our excuse.

I’ll leave you to read elsewhere the much documented and quaint story of how cricket matches between the two countries came to be known as a contest for ‘The Ashes’. If you like Beefeaters and royalty, you guys will love it. It’s a useful reminder in times of stress that the essence of sport is the trivium at its heart.

Suffice it to say, there’s a great deal of anticipation here and there about this sporting contest. We surprisingly beat the Australians in 2005, in a series of such nail-biting tension that many of us were regularly cowering behind our sofas, gibbering. It was possibly the best series of five Test Matches ever. Possibly the most exciting sport ever. England thought they might do well in Australia two years later, and were done up like a kipper. In public relations and playing terms it was a near disaster. This time the two teams are said to be neck and neck. It’s proposed that we have some exciting talent, while they are restructuring. I don’t agree, and fear a nasty surprise awaits anyone who thinks this will even be close, although like everyone else I’m hoping something of the spirit of ’05 can live again. Apart from anything else the camaraderie displayed between some of the principal actors was good to see. Expect no repeat of that this time out.

The Australian team for the first Test in Cardiff is likely to be as follows, in batting order: Katich, Hughes, Ponting, Clarke, Hussey, Watson, Haddin, Johnson, Lee, Hauritz, and either Hilfenhaus or Clark (the former for my money).

The obvious weakness is the lack of a top-class spin bowler. Hauritz is a tall off-spinner (that is, he spins it into the right hand bat from the off or right-hand side). His height enables him to get bounce when the pitch is hard, but it’s difficult to see him as a major threat. For this reason, even at Cardiff where the pitch may be more conducive to spin than elsewhere (although there may be an element of disinformation about that!), the Australians may decide not to play Hauritz. Spin support will supposedly come from Michael Clarke’s orthodox left arm twirlers, which need to be taken seriously and Katich’s box of unorthodox assorted, which really don’t.

Their quick bowling is the worry. This time Mitchell Johnson will provide the shock and awe, a role formerly played by the once super-quick Brett Lee. Johnson has the additional weapon of being a left-arm bowler, and very fast left-armers are rare. The only one in recent memory was Pakistan’s Wasim Akram, a very different sort of proposition to Johnson. Akram had an incredibly fast arm, and even off a very short run was capable of devastating speed which must have appeared to the batsman to come from nowhere. Johnson isn’t yet in Akram’s league, but still expect speeds in the middle nineties once the weather warms up, and together with the awkward angles he generates this spells danger, particularly for the likes of right-handers Bopara and Pietersen who tend to play across the line. Lee is now a more mature bowler, a little less quick, but perhaps more subtle. I like the look of Hilfenhaus very much indeed. He has good pace, and swings the ball late away from the right-handed batter. His action reminds me of Ian Botham and in England he may prove to be the trump card. Stuart Clark has proven success in England behind him, and if the pitches are in any way green (which would suit the English bowlers) he’ll be a handful too. Watson is a useful fifth seamer with points to prove. If Lee is crocked (and there must be doubts that he’ll last the summer) Peter Siddle is a promising replacement.

Haddin isn’t the best wicket-keeper I’ve seen, but he’s adequate, and his batting has often kept an under-performing Australia afloat over the last year. Like the English the Australians sport two left-handed opening batsmen – which isn’t ideal (better to have one right-hander and one left-hander to confuse the bowlers’ lines of attack). Katich is having a renaissance, but may be vulnerable. Hughes, as previously billed, is the one to watch this time round. Ponting is world-class as a batsman, if not as a captain. Get him early or you suffer. Clarke is due a better tour than last time. Hussey is a formidable accumulator. I back him to score a double-hundred sometime in the series. Seven or eight years ago I saw him compile 329 for Northamptonshire, and was in awe of the fact that at that time he couldn’t make the Australian team. He went on and on batting, with no seeming weakness. If Watson gets going he can be destructive. All the Australians know how to bat. All have resilience. Often they will be five wickets down cheaply, and still manage a good score. Johnson’s recent record is as good as any top-order batsman.

On the English side, I fear a weakness of character which will lead to batting collapses at significant moments. There are signs that the bowling is acquiring the penetration required to work their way through the Australian batting, but it requires a fully fit Flintoff to apply pressure while Anderson and Broad get the wickets. In 2005 it took four quality England quicks to undo the Aussies, and I don’t know where the fourth is going to come from this time – Onions (perhaps?) Bresnan ( no!) Sidebottom (might have done 18 months ago, but has lost form). Then, dear God, we’re down to the likes of Plunkett and Mahmood. So if Flintoff doesn’t recover quickly we’re in trouble. And paradoxically his presence creates a weakness in the batting line-up. I hope in all the great efforts to get his body ready to hurl down 90 mph thunderbolts, the coaches don’t neglect the fact that if he plays we need a minimum 250+ runs from him during the series.

In an alternative universe, the English would prepare pitches where the ball bounced and spun from day 1 of each Test match, and Swann and Panesar would repeatedly expose the Australian batting in an area where they were unable to respond. And there goes another little pink pig floating past my window…

2-1 or 3-1 to Australia. Reach for the indigestion tablets, folks.

Role Models

Watching Ravi Bopara and Owais Shah help steer England to a comfortable one-day (50 overs) win against a hapless West Indies at the anonymous Bristol ground today, one’s mind flipped to the news broadcast earlier in the week of Chris Lewis’ conviction for cocaine smuggling.

The players of colour who’ve most recently made an impact on England’s cricket have been of Asian origin. Maybe it’s no coincidence that when he was captain a decade ago Nasser Hussain revivified an England team as demotivated as the West Indies is now. Dimitri Mascarhenas was also in today’s side, Monty Panesar may be in the team for the next Test match, and the young Yorkshire all-rounder Adil Rashid is said to be knocking on the door. Amjad Khan played a single Test in the Caribbean this last winter, although his complicated pedigree takes in Denmark as well as the sub-continent.

Where are our cricketers of Afro-Caribbean background? There was a time when if they weren’t legion there was at least a healthy representation. Devon Malcolm is one now remembered with misty-eyed affection. Tall and gangling, and possessed of a bowling action which was apt to go AWOL when he got over-excited (which seemed to be quite often), Devon’s finest hour came when, having been clouted ringingly on the helmet in the course of a customarily brief sojourn at the crease, he told an over-brash South African team ‘you guys are history’ and proceeded to take nine of the ten wickets available in the next innings. He became a National Hero overnight, his myopic batting only adding lustre to his legendary status. But there were others. The first black England fast bowler was the late Norman Cowans, shock-haired and bustling, and after him came David Lawrence, whose unforgettable, uncompromising charge to the bowling crease sadly led to a crippling injury in New Zealand, and Alex Tudor, whose early promise of high pace was never quite fulfilled. Philip de Freitas was an England stalwart for many years, although his fine control of cut and swing never seemed to get quite the rewards it should: a lack of genuine pace maybe blunted his great skill to some degree. And who can forget Warwickshire’s Gladstone Small, a real hundred per-center with an unusual body shape, who converted himself from an out and out paceman into a far more subtle bowler as his career developed. He never let England down either.

Chris Lewis was perhaps the most naturally gifted of all of them. His England career should have been long and distinguished. He had everything. As a bowler his loose-limbed, economical action allowed him to deliver the ball rapidly. He was a fine fielder, and an explosive batsman: his highest county score was 247, and he played several fine innings for England. But there was always an angle. Early in his England career he fell victim to sunstroke during a Test Match in Australia, the result of shaving his head and then failing to wear a sun-hat. The ‘Sun’ newspaper (appropriate, that!) labelled him ‘The Prat without a hat’. Lewis was a handsome man, but combining modelling and sport always seems to spell trouble. And he left the game alleging that several England colleagues had been willing to take bribes to throw matches in which they had been involved. It did not make him the most popular person in cricket.

But although the latter turn of events left a bad taste, it’s not a crime to fail to make it at the highest level in your chosen professional sport. One bad decision can be the difference between a celebrated career and a forgotten one, and we who watch or comment have to maintain proper humility – most of us simply haven’t been there. And what on earth is it like when the fame and glamour is suddenly gone overnight, and there’s nothing to fall back on, despite the advice you were given when you were sixteen?

It’s still immensely sad that a great opportunity has been wasted: Chris Lewis could have been a fantastic role model, and the effects might have been felt way beyond sport. Instead the reverse has happened, and he’ll now have many years in prison to review what has happened, with uncertain consequences. But…he’s still only 41, and maybe he’ll be free in seven years or so with a chance of doing something to redress the balance. And we really need for this to happen. This bunch of touring West Indians aren’t going to have Britain’s black youngsters flocking to the nets in emulation of their heroes. And I wonder if Messrs Gayle & co. will consider that when they pocket their appearance money after today’s miserable display?

But what about Bobbie Simpson?

May 22nd

On the other hand, what about those CMJ left out? Was it something personal?

(Yes I know, these questions make no sense as they stand. But here we are in the virtual world, where time’s arrow flies a mysteriously non-Einsteinian path, disappearing and then appearing again. You will need to refer to yesterdays’ blog to see where I’m coming from. Or rather going. Sorry.)

Bobbie Simpson for one. R.B. Simpson played for Australia over a span of nearly twenty years from 1957 – which is unusual for an international cricketer – but there were unusual circumstances. He was a formidable batsman, who averaged over 45 in Test cricket, which is a benchmark for the very good. He was perhaps not a memorable player in terms of strokeplay – although he was positively extrovert compared with Bill Lawry his sometime opening batting partner – but my, he was effective. His career highlight came when he amassed 311 against a toothless English attack at Manchester in 1964, batting England out of the series. It was a typically ruthless piece of play. He was fast between the wickets, and very fit. He was a very underrated leg-spin bowler, although he might have been more successful had he been prepared to risk more. He was always a man who seemed to prefer to play the percentages. He was without doubt the best close to the wicket fielder of his age. And having retired, he came back to playing for the sake of others, captaining Australia in the late nineteen seventies at a time when the country’s cricket administration was being torn apart by the arrival of large quantities of TV money. In many ways he sowed the seeds of the great Australian teams which were to follow.

Damn it. You see, there I go, doing exactly what CMJ wants me to. But anyway Christopher, I want to know. What about Bobbie Simpson?

I haven’t mentioned the outcome of the recent Test Match against the West Indies. England won, but it caught no one’s imagination. England put together a large total, losing only six wickets in doing so. Cook was finally out for 160. Pietersen, Collingwood and Prior all contributed handsomely, and from the outset the West Indies looked unlikely to hold out provided the showery, blustery weather allowed sufficient time. Ramnaresh Sarwan scored a very good hundred in their first innings, but that was about it as far as resistance went. Bowled out for 310 and then 176, they looked a poor, demoralised, side. The English bowlers found much more life in the pitch than their West Indian counterparts, and even Tim Bresnan, until then the invisible man of the English team, got in on the act with three second innings wickets. It would be a pity if this extended his tenure of a place in the side. The man of the match was the English quick bowler James Anderson who looked extremely menacing. He made the ball snake around at high pace. At the present time his approach to the wicket is smooth and controlled. The delivery appears effortless. If he can maintain his form when the Australians arrive he should pose a major threat to their batsmen. Or so we really hope…

But this really was a hollow victory, because we all know it raises questions about the long-term viability of cricket in the West Indies, and more generally the pattern of Test cricket in the future. The game of cricket has undergone huge changes over three hundred years. Are we about to see another revolution, far greater than that which Bobbie Simpson confronted?

Hot 100

May 21st

In Britain, the Bank Holiday weekends often see the evening TV screens occupied by compilations of clips you’ve seen a million times before with titles like ‘Top 100 screen pratfalls’ or ‘Your favourite 100 newsreaders’. The choice of item is often said to be governed by viewers’ votes, though no one’s ever asked me. One screen kiss merges into another as far as I’m concerned, though obviously a lot of people care enough to complete a survey. From the TV company’s point of view of course this kind of thing is great telly. Dead cheap. Zero creativity. Fire and forget. You will have these programmes in the US. Hell, you probably invented them.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins is a man some of us have grown up with. It comes as a surprise to find him now the senior ‘voice of cricket’ on BBC radio (though not their cricket correspondent), insofar as it only seems like yesterday that he was the rookie, pitching himself nervously alongside radio greats like John Arlott and Brian Johnson. But that was probably nineteen seventy-something. In comedic terms he’s still a straight man (he has a son who plays county cricket with moderate success so it’s a fair assumption this is also true in the sexual sense), and maybe there are too many straight men in the radio commentary box these days. Sometimes indeed he seems entirely devoid of a funny-bone. But that’s not his fault. He’s a sound judge of the game, as befits a man until recently the Times’ cricket correspondent. He obviously loves it to pieces: it’s been his life.

I find him less compelling to read than listen to. And I won’t be rushing out to buy his latest offering ‘The Top 100 Cricketers of all time’, for which the Times newspaper is offering much support this week. It turns out I’ve seen 61 of Martin Jenkins’ 100 play, either on screen or in the flesh, which gives one pause for thought. He’s selected only from the game’s modern era, but that still gives at least 132 years to look at, if one takes as a starting point the first accepted Test Match in 1877, so clearly his choice his canted towards the very modern. On the other hand, I have to face it. I am now quite old.

Readers of this blog may be interested to know that Donald Bradman is no 1 in CMJ’s list, but as I’ve suggested, few will argue about that. Les Ames is there at 64, Vijay Merchant at 96. Tendulkar makes it to no 9, but poor old Brian Lara languishes at 24, surely too low. The leading bowler is the near-contemporary Shane Warne at 4, and the first wicket-keeper on the list is the recently retired Australian Adam Gilchrist at 10, although it’s a combination of Gilchrist’s keeping and his electrifying batting which gets him there.

But while it makes for a good evening’s argument down the pub on about the third pint after a moderately awful local league game, I can’t see the sense of a list which somehow rates F. R. Spofforth (27 – ‘The Demon’) many places higher than C.T.B. Turner (95 - ‘The Terror). In their day (both nineteenth century figures) they were deemed to be the best there was. Sorry, Christopher, and not that you’ll care what I think or possibly ever know, but this is a pointless exercise, and one that smacks of a desperate search for a new angle on a book.

The thing which strikes me as I look down the list of great names (and of course there’s not a dud one among them, for all that I’m cavilling about the nature of the project) is not a query about whether no. 74 or is better than 47, but the elusive memory that each provokes. It arouses a profound and genuine regret for the lost moments from past time, and a longing to have seen the thirty-nine of whom I have no personal knowledge.

Even the replay on TV of relatively recent great moments of cricket history carries little charm. To see again, as we frequently will on wet days this summer, the highlights of the 1981 series against Australia, when Ian Botham in his pomp won the unlikeliest of victories for England, reduces the experience rather than enhances it. The greatest cricket moments for me are entirely in the head. They still conjure up the tastes and sounds of an era in a way old clips can never do. Colin Cowdrey’s (78) smooth, elegant, cover drive or nonchalant slip catching (his party trick was to pocket the ball after he’d caught it, and look behind him towards the boundary, pretending to search for its onward direction), Ted Dexter’s (75) ferocious raging bull square cut, Fred Trueman’s (22) mop of dark hair and perfect aggressive bowling action, all define my late childhood and teenage years. I don’t want to see the pictures again. And I don’t care a jot where the individuals are ranked. It’s the ephemeral image located somewhere in the middle brain, complete with what I had for tea that day and what was no 1 in the pop charts, fading a little with each year rather like Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, which makes these people so close to my heart. We are so literal these days. Let it go. Let it go.

Disrespect, man!

May 15th

I’ll keep it short. Yesterday was one of the more troubling days of Test cricket I’ve watched or listened to. On the face of things, it was a good day for England. They batted serenely through the day to a total of 302 for only two wickets down by the close of play. Two batsmen scored centuries, Alastair Cook and (again) Ravi Bopara. They’re team mates at Essex, and their styles are nicely complimentary. Cook accumulates, Bopara can be violent, as when he moved to his century against the left-arm spin bowler Benn with a series of biffs past and over the bowler.

But the West Indians brought little to the proceedings, apart from some keen fielding early on. The bowling was often half-hearted, lacking in energy except when late in the afternoon Edwards inexplicably decided to rough up the English tail ender Anderson, sent in shortly before the close when Bopara had been dismissed by one of the day’s few good balls. In the context it seemed a particularly sour moment. Anderson had been painfully hit on the head in the first Test.

Earlier, part-time bowlers were employed apparently to save the limbs of more experienced ones. Spin was used, perhaps only to get the day done with (spin bowlers take shorter run-ups, and therefore get through an over more quickly). The captain, Chris Gayle, seemed absolutely disconnected with the game. It’s one thing not to be sufficiently talented to compete, quite another just not to bother.

It was cold, despite the sunshine. The pitch was slow and flat. Only 3000 seats had been sold before play started: there were fewer in the ground than for recent inter-county matches. And the weather forecast suggested we’d be lucky to get a result from this match even by the end of Monday. But these aren’t excuses. There should have been pride at stake, and the attitude of the West Indies team was disrespectful. They appeared to agree with the sentiments of Gayle before the game when he said more than once that Test cricket no longer mattered, or something pretty close to that.

It’ll matter in mid-summer, when the Australians are here, you see if it doesn’t, as much as sport ever can.

Stumpers

May 14th

Lester Martin’s dad once played for England: just the once in 1947, but he did, he really did, and Lester still sported the England sweater to prove it. Jack Martin was a burly fast bowler for Kent, called up in his country’s time of need, and junked, like a politician, immediately thereafter. Lester was captain of my school’s under 15. I was his deputy. I didn’t have a dad who’d played for England, after all – but don’t get the feeling I’m in any way bitter about this forty years on. And the one match I captained, when Lester was ill, we beat the City of London School easily, thanks to my unusual and cunning bowling changes. (City of London all out 57: P. Wootton four wickets for three runs, Cross three for seven) I don’t remember us winning any others that season.

Anyway, leaving personal animus to one side, one great thing Lester did was to get me the autograph of Les Ames. If I hadn’t carelessly mislaid it in my late teens it would still be a treasured possession.

Ames was probably the best wicketkeeper/batsman Kent and England ever produced, playing regularly for the national side in the nineteen thirties. The only one to rival him would have been the more recent player Alec Stewart, and although the stats suggest the two were comparable in their batting skills, anecdotally Ames was the better of the two ‘keepers.

The wicketkeeper is the lynchpin of a cricket team. He gets a lot of batsmen out, by catching them, or stumping them (if the batsman leaves his ‘ground’ when trying to play a ball), or completing a run-out if the batsmen try for a run injudiciously and fail to complete it before the ball is returned. He makes bowlers feel good, constantly telling them they’re the world’s best and how the last delivery didn’t dispatch the hapless ****** batter he’ll never know. He supplies energy to a flagging team, and keeps fielding standards high. He knows more about the prevailing conditions because he, best of all, sees what the ball is doing in the air or off the pitch. He can get in the batsman’s ear, and unsettle him with humour or comment. There’s a lot of standing around in cricket, and it’s possible to spend the whole of a multi-day match without contributing a great deal, but the wicketkeeper’s always in the action. Wicketkeepers are often eccentrics: rarely introverted.

But being a great wicketkeeper often isn’t enough. Les Ames’ contemporary in the Kent side was a man called ‘Hopper’ Levett. From what I’ve told you, you might think the hopping bit referred to some unusual quirk of his movement, but in fact Levett was the son of a hop farmer, born in the Wealden hill-top village of Goudhurst, as lovely a place as any Tuscan town, even today. Levett was a fantastic wicketkeeper, perhaps even better than Ames, ticking all the boxes outlined above. But he was a poor batsman, and although he had a fine career deputising for Ames in the Kent team, he never played at the highest level. Touchingly, the county indoor cricket school in Canterbury was named after the two of them.

This balance of requirements between ‘keeping and batting troubles England team selectors still. Prior, the English wicketkeeper of the moment is a fine bat – one of the radio commentators offered the opinion the other day that he’s worth his place in the side for that alone, which is maybe only a slight exaggeration. However pretty well everyone’s agreed he’s not the best wicketkeeper in the country. He dives for the ball when a simpler movement would do. He too often has hard hands. There’ll be some moments this summer when he’ll make important mistakes.

We’ve tried a few in recent years. There was Geraint Jones, the Kentish Australian, who played against the Aussies in the last home ‘Ashes’ series. Jones is spunky and a most attractive batsman (in good form at the moment), but his keeping can be gawky. Another adopted Antipodean, Tim Ambrose, has been tried and found marginally wanting because bowlers too easily find his batting limitations and bowl to them. James Foster is the best wicketkeeper, and has scored stacks of runs, but rather unfairly he’s having to live down memories of fallibility for England earlier in his career. However he has the English coach on his side: they share the county of Essex. Paul Mustard from Durham is tall for the job (there’s a lot of bending involved!), and on his day can be a devastating hitter. In the wings is the very talented Steven Davies, who has perhaps been unlucky not to have been previously selected at national level. His time must surely come.

We’ll perhaps see more than one of them play during this summer. I wonder whose autograph the boys will be collecting in twenty years time?