A Last English Summer by Duncan Hamilton (Book Review)

In cricket, seemingly nothing ever stays the same. The times are always a changin' and seldom, so goes the prevailing view, is it for the better. From the Golden Age to Bodyline to Packer, from run rates to over rates to the Old Lie itself - the 'spirit of the game', cricket has been forever heading on a one way journey straight to hell.

Duncan Hamilton's particular snapshot in time is the 2009 English season. Unashamedly invoking the spirit of J.B. Priestley's English Journey and the style and substance of Geoffrey Moorhouse's The Best Loved Game (chosen, incidentally, by Michael Atherton as his favourite cricket book), he guides us on what feels like a valedictory tour around England (and Wales), from Lord's to Ramsbottom, from Headingley to Hambledon, from Cardiff to Canterbury.

Hamilton is an unapologetic traditionalist, taught to love the game by his grandfather over leisurely summers days at Trent Bridge in the late 1960's.  To Cardus, Nottingham was a 'lotus land' where the score was always 360 for 2. It is no less special to Hamilton whose prose may be a slightly darker shade of violet and more resistant to hyperbole but who is a no less eloquent, honest or heart-felt observer. Whilst his recurring themes may claw with some readers, they merely resonated with this one.

At Trent Bridge, he eavesdrops on a debate over the number of overs bowled in the previous season by the somewhat injury prone Ryan Sidebottom.  On cue, a Playfair Annual, still the essential companion for any self respecting country cricket watcher, is produced. The issue is resolved but self-righteousness and disbelief pervade. It is a scene so familiar as to be almost cliche. At Old Trafford in the late 80's the "three bores", as we came to refer them, frequently (and with disturbing precision for a 25,000 seater ground)  installed themselves and their reference libraries directly behind my father and me in the Ladies' Stand driving us to seat-shuffling distraction with their curmudgeonly chit chat whilst simultaneously enveloping us in cigar smoke. Looking back now with older, hopefully wiser eyes, I wonder whether they too were not simply in mourning for their own halycon days when Brian Statham bowled unchanged from the Stretford End and the opposition were always 36 for 4. Even now it only takes one whiff of a cigar to transport me back to those carefree, oh so innocent times.

The author's major gripe, unsurprisingly, is with the rise and rise of T20. His argument, and it is a strong one, Is that T20 is simply an inferior game, not simply a pared down version of the first class one but one stripped of the qualities that make cricket great.

He takes particular issue with its brashness and superficiality in general and the IPL in particular with its music, gimmicks and incessant, screeching commentary. There is an element of chicken and egg in all this though. Is T20 a mere reflection of today's Snapchat society or have we as a society been simply reprogrammed by modern media to accept that instantaneous, unthinking gratification is the reward most worth seeking?

Despite his disquiet Hamilton never descends into mean-spiritedness, a trap into which other 'traditionalists' like Michael Henderson frequently fall. He writes with sadness rather than bitterness on the changing shape of the English summer and the future of the first class game. However, as he rightly points out much the same arguments were being made when the 40 over Players' League started up in the late 60's. It was supposed to be the beginning of the end but instead it improved standards particularly in fielding and raised the incomes of struggling counties. Sounds familiar? Lessons from history need not always be warnings.

Sometimes though, lessons are simply just not learnt. In mid-May, the author visits Durham as England face the West Indies. For financial reasons the Test series has been crammed into a fixture list bloated by the World T20 Cup which will begin in early June. Unsurprisingly the crowd is pitiful, the lowest in recent memory. Prior to the game, the then West Indies captain Chris Gayle comments that he "wouldn't be so sad" if Test cricket died. The two events sit in uncomfortable juxtaposition.  The author ponders how such scheduling could have come about.

Far worse, however, has been the failure to learn from such mistakes. Another poorly conceived and even more poorly attended Test match in May 2016 exacerbated Durham's already dire financial situation. Cruelly, the 2013 champions started the 2017 season consigned to the second division, punished for their financial failings with relegation and a 40 point penalty.

There are also sobering reminders of tragedy's shadowy presence over cricketing life.  At Worcester, Phillip Hughes, battles with form and footwork on his first Ashes tour whilst at Colwyn Bay, Tom Maynard, cocksuredly predicts and delivers a spectacular hundred. Both exceptional talents, both now gone. Meanwhile at Scarborough, James Taylor plays a stylish cameo for England Under 19s, blissfully and perhaps thankfully unaware of the congenital heart problem that will end a promising international career seven years later.

Hamilton has rightly avoided disrupting the natural flow of the text with too many statistics and instead the book ends with an annexe of approximately 60 pages encompassing almost every conceivable fact and figure along with pen portraits which follow up on the fortunes of the book's  key protagonists. It's questionable whether such detail adds much to the work as a whole and indeed when contrasted with the mellowness of the previous pages this chunk of raw data feels particularly rough, like being awoken from soothing dream by a hotel fire alarm.

I first read this book back in 2010, it was good then but time has given it an extra dimension. Beautifully written and sympathetically observed, it stands and will continue to stand as an historical piece, just as Moorhouse's did for 1978, proving once again just how quickly things can change and yet how much they stay the same. As Cardus once mused " the golden age is always well behind us; we catch sight of it with young eyes when we see what we want to. ."

Phillip Hughes: a tragedy in many parts

"He died doing what he loved."

It's funny how often you hear that, as if in some way it mitigates the tragedy of an untimely, unforeseen, senseless death. Surely it only makes the thing more tragic? If someone died doing something they hated then at least there would be mitigation in them not having to do it any more. So we must reject that idea. Phillip Hughes' death is an unmitigated tragedy. And it is a tragedy on many levels.

There is the level on which we can all relate. The human one. This was after all a life cut off in its prime. It has left families and friends distraught, a part of themselves lost forever. And in the cruel warping of nature's cycle of life it has left parents to bury their own child. Amongst all the inevitable talk and speculation, of which I am now going to add, we should never let this be forgotten.

There is a particular tragedy in the premature deaths of sports people. They are not usually our friends, nor even acquaintances but as fans we can develop, well fanatical attachments. Often we have watched them or noted their names from a young age, fifteen or sixteen, sometimes younger. There is something of the talent scout in all of us, we like to talk about the young lad we saw in the nets when he was eleven, the next Sachin we confidently and erroneously predict. And once we have identified them we like to stick with them, see where the story leads, smugly celebrating their successes and cursing their inevitable failures. We don't know whether they will make it but now we have invested in their lives we want to see how the story ends. But for Phil Hughes we never shall. And it is particularly sad because his story was a fascinating one. Brought up in a small, rural town, he batted as you might expect - with freedom, freshness and scant regard for urban convention. And then it became a bit of a struggle; the city slickers worked him out, and he disappeared back into the crowd. But he wouldn't go away, and significantly, many good judges continued to believe in him. Whether they were right or not we will now never know. We have been denied the end of the story and that's not supposed to happen. Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, it is hard not to imagine him looking down on us, aghast, that rather than proving his critics wrong, he had, in his final moments, added grist to their mill. It was a cruel and undeserved end.

And then there is the wider tragedy. I have a sense that cricket has finally, truly lost its innocence. Let's be honest we all thought this had happened a long time ago - match fixing (18th century style), Bodyline, World Series Cricket, sledging, match fixing (21st century style), IPL cheerleaders - but we were wrong, these were just trivial events, situations to be managed or glossed over. What's that they say when people start taking sport too seriously? "Calm down, nobody died". Well they were right. They were right then and they are right now. Someone has died and we can't calm down and we shouldn't. As much as we want too, we can't just brush this under the carpet and carry on as before. It's the last thing we want to do but we have to face up to this.

In some sports such as motorsport or boxing danger is front and centre, it is integral. In cricket it is no more than incidental. It's a hard game sure, requiring courage every bit as much as skill to succeed, but dangerous? It's not really a word we use is it? And yet we should, at least we shouldn't shy away from it. You know what might be the strangest aspect of this horrible incident? That when it comes to the game we love, suddenly it looks as if our fussing mums knew the truth better than we did. If they could see it, why couldn't we?

In recent years we have seen more and more Test cricketers get hit on the head and yet not one of us worried. They rubbed their heads, sometimes they changed their helmet, at worst they got a broken nose. Injuries, they're part of sport aren't they? He's got a helmet on, he'll be fine. We were blind, wilfully blind. We trusted in these helmets as if they were lucky totems - beyond all rational reason. We saw the consequences - the hits, the cuts and bruises, the momentary losses of equilibrium but we didn't see, or we didn't want to see the danger. And when I say we, I don't just mean "us" the spectators, the supporters, the commentators, I mean "them" too, the players, especially the players. They thought they were indestructible. It's not that they don't know how to avoid these deliveries, it's not that they aren't taught properly, they are. They know they should get their head inside or outside the line or under the ball, but they don't or they didn't know why. They were blind, wilfully blind. And it has cost Phil Hughes his life. His blindness, all our blindness. But we can claim blindness no longer.

It is worth reiterating, that this wasn't just any old cricketer, this was Phil Hughes. He was a Test match batsman. This wasn't a club match, this wasn't a weekend grade cricketer, this wasn't even a hapless tailender pummelled mercilessly from around the wicket. Not getting hit by a cricket ball was Phil Hughes' job and of the 7 billion or so people on this planet he was considered one of the very best at it. And he was killed. He was killed.

I don't know how this will change cricket, I just know that it will. It is of course right to urge against rushes to judgment, although where the ICC is concerned this is hardly a real concern. Can we make helmets safer? Of course we can. Can we make helmets safer to the point where there is no significant risk of this happening again? Probably. But can we make helmets safer to the point where there is no significant risk of this happening against whilst at the same time ensuring that that batsman retain the same freedom of movement and sensory perception? The answer is probably not and if this is the case then some tough decisions will have to be made and we may not like them.

One place where the word "dangerous" does actually appear is in  Law 42.6 (a)(1). It states:

(a) Bowling of fast short pitched balls

(i) The bowling of fast short pitched balls is dangerous and unfair if the bowler’s end umpire considers that by their repetition and taking into account their length, height and direction they are likely to inflict physical injury on the striker irrespective of the protective equipment he may be wearing. The relative skill of the striker shall be taken into consideration.

From a legal standpoint I have always found this a strangely worded clause. It  implies that the frequency of the short pitched bowling should be taken into account in considering danger. Why? Do we wait for a bowler to deliver a third or a fourth beamer before considering the batsman to be in danger? And conversely if the delivery is designed to gain the batsman's wicket why should the bowler be limited in such a way. 

Of course my mistake is to read this as a legal clause, it is not. It is a deliberately broad and inexactly worded guideline designed to give umpires a degree of authority in managing the game. A rough translation would be that "bowlers do not have carte blanche to bowl as many short balls as they wish at batsmen of limited ability". We can imply no stronger message than that.

The problem is that the cat is now out of the bag. We now know what "dangerous" means, it means potentially fatal. And as such this clause can no longer be taken so lightly. We can wish that the law of the land stops at the touchline or the boundary edge but increasingly it does not. How will this affect umpires? Do they not owe a duty of care to each and every player, just as a rugby referee does? What about the captain? These are questions we don't want to hear, but we cannot avoid them. Putting our heads in the sand, whether wearing helmets or not, is no longer an option.

We should also not forget one more tragedy, one more victim. A living one. Mike Atherton wrote on Tuesday about Peter Lever's struggles after nearly killing Ewan Chatfield. It seems hard to imagine Sean Abbott playing again this season, and you have to wonder whether he will ever play again. Whilst we can and should honour and remember Phil Hughes, Sean Abbott needs our support.

Are central contracts up to the Test?

In the Times last Thursday Mike Atherton argued, that "the whole point of central contracts is to ensure that England's premier bowlers are fit and ready for every Test match." A clear prioritisation of Test cricket therefore and one for which he believes we should be  unapologetic.

Pretty logical I would have thought and entirely fitting with the basis on which the whole expensive idea was sold in the first place. Not only that but with the team ranked number one in the world and with a seventh consecutive home series victory assured, these central contracts have clearly worked.

But as Atherton was perhaps gently implying, does this prioritisation of Test cricket over other international cricket actually exist or more accurately does it still exist? The possibility of England's new ball attack being rested for the last West Indies Test leaves this open to question.

The two cases concerned tell different tales. The first, that of James Anderson, is the more nuanced and thus the more easily defendable from a selectorial viewpoint. Anderson apparently has a niggling thigh injury. According to national selector Geoff Miller, the rest would give Anderson the chance to "overcome several minor injuries" and was "in the best interest of the team and James himself". Now for all I know the selector's have received medical advice that, at the very least, suggests that bowling another 50 or 60 overs would risk aggravating the injury(ies) and risk Anderson's missing the first Test against South Africa on 19 July. If so then fair enough, it is good, professional player management. In last summer's blue riband series, India went into the series with a half fit opening bowler, he took three wickets in the first morning and then hobbled off never to return. We know what happened next. England do not want to make the same mistake.

Anderson, however, seems less than convinced. He claims to be suffering from neither fatigue nor injury. On the contrary he has declared himself fit to play.  Now no player wants to miss a Test match or indeed any international match and so player estimations of their own health must be taken with a pinch of salt. But Anderson is no fool. As has been suggested, somewhat ungenerously, he may have regarded the Third Test as an opportunity to pick up some cheap wickets ahead of bigger challenges, but in fact like all top sportsmen it is for the biggest challenges that he plays the game. The South African series will be only a fraction down on the itensity of an Ashes series and more than a fraction up in terms of quality. Is he likely to risk missing that? One thing's for sure, in terms of preparation he is no Zaheer Khan.

The second and more troubling case is of Stuart Broad, for whom no such injury concerns have been expressed. He is in the twelve man squad but remains an uncertain starter. It is not in debate that Broad (and indeed Anderson) has a busy period of cricket between now and the first South African Test - eight ODIs and one T20 to be precise - but how can that possible justify resting a fully fit bowler who has already been forced to miss one Test match this year through injury? If he is fit, surely he must play. 

But listening to England's Head Coach it seems increasingly likely that Broad will not play. In fact Andy Flower has put forward a strong defence of the policy of rest and rotation. One, however, that dispels any myth of the absolute primacy of Test cricket. "We came into this series with one goal and that was to win the series," Flower said. "We've achieved that goal so our priorities do shift. I'm not intending to demean the importance of this Test but, since we won the series already, our priority on the Test front does now shift to the South Africa series. There is also a slight shift to the West Indies one-day series because that series stands at 0-0. We haven't won that series, we've won this one. Part of our decision making is based around those reasons"

He may not intend to demean the importance of this Test but he does. No matter how superficially attractive some of his arguments may seem (there is merit in his desire to increase the "pool" of fast bowlers as well as in his observation that the selection of Finn and Onions would hardly weaken the team) they just don't stack up. In particular, rationalising the decision in the light of the South Africa series does not wash. If priority had truly shifted to that series then Ravi Bopara, who will surely take Jonny Bairstow's place then, should have played now. But instead Bairstow is rightly retained.

Referencing resting and rotational practices in other sports does not work either. For one thing, in no other national team sport in the UK is the management granted complete control over their players. With centrally contracted players playing virtually no county cricket these days, and with rest and rotation already being exercised in ODIs, do players' workloads still need further "managing"?

If the answer is yes it can mean only one of two things: that this summer's schedule is grossly overloaded or that central contracts are not working. I prefer to blame the schedule, not only because the one-day series with Australia is so palpably pointless but because, as much as I try, it is hard to argue with a number one ranking.

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Kevin Pietersen's retirement from all one-day cricket has served only to fling further mud into these murky waters. But whatever Pietersen's motivation it should not be overlooked that one of the superstars of the modern game, and a "great" fan of T20, has made a decision designed to keep him playing Test cricket for for the forseeable future. In these uncertain times let us just be happy about that.