The Shorter Wisden 2013 (31 page)

Bloggers may often feel as if they are writing in a vacuum, even if they begin only with the objective of writing for themselves, or believe there is something that needs to be said that no one
else has. But Atherton’s comment that “some of the best cricket writing at the moment is on blogs” received plenty of attention. Jarrod Kimber, at
blogs.espncricinfo.com/sadisthour
wrote: “Atherton’s comments don’t legitimatise cricket blogging. But I think, to
bloggers, tweeters and all those who chat about cricket for no money, they know that, if they produce quality and act like normal human beings, people like Atherton will feel comfortable enough to
interact with them.”

One recent trend has been the rise of collectives, communities of cricket bloggers run either by fans or, on a more commercial basis, by professional media organisations.
thesightscreen.com
features a variety of writers, including Kimber, Jon Hotten and Masuud Qazi, whose article comparing the Pakistan–England series to
chaos theory was inspired off-the-wall analysis.

But as bloggers become assimilated into collectives, commercial endeavours and the mainstream media, they risk diluting the independence of unaffiliated observers who are on the outside, looking
in. The lone blogger may be an endangered species, but notables include Freddie Wilde, whose blog at
fwildecricket.blogspot.co.uk
features his entertaining “Twitter at the Tests”. Scott Oliver at
reversesweeper.blogspot.co.uk
takes a more academic
and philosophical approach, combining tales of league cricket with and against Imran Tahir, Tino Best and Rangana Herath, with references to David Hume and non-linear thermodynamics. As you do.

By far the best newcomer this year, though, has been Darren Harold, who writes as “A Cricketing Buddha” at
donningthewhites.blogspot.com
. His five-part series on New Zealand’s
Wisden
Cricketers of the Year is full of scholarly enthusiasm
for his country’s cricketing history, and is a must-read. In his essay “Why blog? Why not?” he says: “I try to write a number of pieces that give me a reason to go back in
time, often inside my own memory banks, and read about the deeds of some of my heroes, and their heroes.” With his passion for the game’s past, and an understanding of its ties to the
present, Harold’s blog encapsulates everything that is best about amateur cricket writing.

S. A. Rennie blogs at
legsidefilth.com
.

RETIREMENTS

S
TEVE
J
AMES

We should have known that
Andrew Strauss
would call it a day at the end of the 2012 season. The signs had been there: the gradual decline in form that had not
quite been arrested by two centuries against West Indies in May; and the various pieces of symbolism that attached themselves to the final Test of the summer, at Lord’s – his 100th as a
player, 50th as captain, and at his home ground, where his Test career had begun eight years earlier. Even so, like all the best-timed retirements, it still felt like a bit of a surprise.

It was presumed that Strauss would oversee Ashes series in 2013 and 2013-14 – if not by the man himself. As he put it: “I’d run my race.” In truth, the race had been run
in his own mind long before he misjudged a straight one in his final innings. But, in a move as classy and understated as the letters he handwrote to all but one of his team-mates to tell them of
his decision, he offered his intentions only to his closest confidants. There was never going to be the circus of a farewell series that might have shifted focus away from the team.

Strauss achieved nearly all an England Test captain could hope for, principally Ashes victories home and away, and the No. 1 ranking. He also made 21 Test centuries, leaving only Wally Hammond,
Colin Cowdrey and Geoffrey Boycott ahead of him at the time. The Kevin Pietersen saga alone threatened to spoil the dignified manner of his departure.

By contrast, another Middlesex product,
Mark Ramprakash
, made only two Test hundreds. But he scored 68 more first-class centuries than Strauss (114 to 46), though he did play in
461 matches to Strauss’s 241 in a 26-year career culminating in 11 seasons at Surrey after he left Middlesex in 2001. Ramprakash should be remembered as a great of the county game, and I have
seen no better technician. But at international level, he was granted 52 Test caps, and must be considered a failure. One is left to wonder what might have been had he played under a central
contract, or been made England captain when he was interviewed for the job along with Nasser Hussain in 1999.

Another cricketer of passion and longevity,
Robert Croft
, felt he had more to give. But eventually, at 42, he called time, having taken over 1,000 first-class wickets and scored
more than 10,000 runs – a unique achievement among Glamorgan cricketers. I played alongside him in 1989, when he made his debut against Surrey at The Oval, and also five years later at the
same ground, when we played in a Second XI match, after being dropped by captain Hugh Morris. For us both it was a significant and timely jolt from our reveries. Two years later, Croft made his
Test debut, again at The Oval.

To use his favourite rugby analogy, he always said playing for Glamorgan was like representing Wales, with England akin to the British Lions. He won 21 Test caps, and was never less than
passionate, as witnessed by his battling batting to save the Old Trafford Test against South Africa in 1998.

Jonathan Batty
spent most of his career at The Oval, but never did receive England’s call. I played against him there in 1999, when his cheekbone was broken by a vicious
delivery from Simon Jones, bowling at a ferocious pace in tandem with the equally hostile Jacques Kallis. Batty, a dependable wicketkeeper and useful batsman, played in Surrey’s next
Championship match – the guts among their glitter. At one stage, he accepted the tricky task of captaining the glamour boys, which said much for his character. He finished his playing days a
popular figure at Gloucestershire.

Will Jefferson
wound up at Leicestershire, but it was at Essex that his huge promise as an opener emerged (and at 6ft 10½in, he was the tallest-ever specialist
first-class batsman). In their two-day match against the touring Australians in 2005 – when Alastair Cook (214) and Ravi Bopara (135) made names for themselves – it is easily forgotten
that Jefferson hit a quick 64. He played superbly in Leicestershire’s 2011 Twenty20 triumph, success which he ascribed to the soothing powers of Bikram yoga, but a rare hip condition ended
his career at the age of 32.

Charl Willoughby
played at Leicestershire and Somerset (as well as gaining two Test caps for South Africa), before finishing his career at Essex. A left-armer, he was not quick.
But he possessed the rare skill of late swing, to the extent that, in six seasons for Somerset, he claimed 347 wickets, often when Taunton was at its flattest.

Michael Di Venuto
won two Championships, in 2008 and 2009, with Durham. He had retired from Australian state cricket in 2008, but continued in the county game, spending six
years in the North-East after spells with Derbyshire and Sussex. He was a top-notch left-hander, and was unfortunate to have been limited to nine one-day internationals by Australia’s batting
riches. Di Venuto took advantage of his heritage to play for Italy in the 2012 World Twenty20 qualifying tournament, but with modest returns.

Ben Scott
, a wicketkeeper with Surrey, Middlesex and Worcestershire, was as silky as any gloveman of his generation – including James Foster – but was often
discarded in favour of better batsmen. Another keeper, the South African-born
Gerard Brophy
, could certainly bat, and in four years at Northamptonshire and seven at Yorkshire
(where, remarkably, he received a benefit season) he scored over 5,000 first-class runs.

Yet another wicketkeeper,
Paul Dixey
, left the game aged only 24, having played just 22 first-class matches for Kent and Leicestershire. And
James Cameron
, a
useful Zimbabwean-born all-rounder, was 26 when he informed Worcestershire he wanted to pursue a career in finance. Derbyshire’s off-spinner
Jake Needham
, just 25 and
surprisingly deprived of opportunities given his natural ability to spin the ball, had already announced he would do the same.

CRICKETANA

D
AVID
R
AYVERN
A
LLE N

As the auction merry-go-round continues to spin, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern who is actually doing the bidding. The internet – even the humble telephone
– offers anonymity, and not just for the big spenders. At all the major cricket auctions, from London to Cardiff via Nottingham, Leicester, Chester or Ludlow, sales rarely have as many as 30
people in the room. And even when bids are seemingly placed in person, the
real
purchaser may often be hiding behind a frontman, occasionally two. A decoy can be useful when highly
desirable items are on offer – and when serious money and the thrill of the chase allow an auction house to assume an air of machismo and flirt with the world of espionage…

Not that everyone warms to the drama of the saleroom. The book dealer Christopher Saunders claims there are too many cricket auctions: “They tend to devalue the product, particularly when
eBay is a continuous auction.” There is a counter-argument: since cricket booksellers issue an average of two or three catalogues a year, why shouldn’t there be as many sales? Saunders
also bemoans the damage caused by VAT at 20% and high postage charges: “It costs £5.40 to send a catalogue to Australia or New Zealand. It becomes prohibitive.” One man’s
misfortune, of course, is another’s opportunity, and there are bargains available. “With the market for run-of-the-mill items in the doldrums, there has been no alternative but to
reduce prices.” Yet the illustrated catalogues produced by Saunders, Surrey dealer John McKenzie and others are inviting, and there are plenty of high-end items to pore over: Saunders was
offering juvenilia, runs of Almanacks and much offbeat material in between.

McKenzie, meanwhile, was celebrating 40 years in business with his 174th cricket catalogue. Some of the 918 entries were exceptionally scarce: early F. S. Ashley-Cooper booklets; a first edition
of James Dance’s
Cricket: An Heroic Poem
(from 1744); the Rev. John Duncombe’s parody
Surry Triumphant
(1773); and a second edition of Thomas Boxall’s
Rules
and Instructions for playing at the Game of Cricket
(
c.
1801–02). None was especially cheap, but many items found buyers.

The chances are high that those buyers will be men: Saunders counts only ten women among his thousand or so active clients. But they seem unperturbed at entering what is widely seen as a male
preserve, and collecting for themselves. However, McKenzie thinks there may be vicarious purchasing at work: “It’s difficult to quantify. They could be buying for their
husbands.”

Whoever is doing the purchasing, there are traps, especially online, for the unwary. The old adage – if something looks too good to be true then it probably is – still applies.
“Customers ring me,” says McKenzie, “and declare they’ve purchased an original autograph of, say, Victor Trumper or Joe Darling for less than £50 – and they
don’t realise they are almost certain to be fakes.” These deceptions can emanate from almost anywhere in the world. It remains a case of
caveat emptor
, wherever the sale takes
place.

In his March auction, Trevor Vennett-Smith sold a striking oil painting, thought to be by A. L. “Toby” Grace, of a boy doing homework and looking longingly out of a window at a game
of cricket. The painting was probably commissioned by bat-makers Gunn and Moore for their showroom, before being passed to Nottinghamshire and England star Reg Simpson, a director of the firm. It
raised over £7,000 after premium and VAT had been added.

Vennett-Smith also sold the extensive personal paper-based archive of former England captain Freddie Brown. There had been doubt about ownership but, once this was resolved, the two albums
– containing telegrams, dinner menus, letters, snapshots, scorecards and the like from his playing career – fetched around £18,000. In November, the first half of Denijs
Morkel’s archive came up for sale. He played 16 Tests for South Africa between 1927-28 and 1931-32, before moving to Nottingham, where he captained Sir Julien Cahn’s XI, made guest
appearances for MCC and played a few wartime (non-first-class) games at Trent Bridge. The scrapbook, containing unusual ephemera, went for £2,700 on the hammer.

The focal point of Tim Knight’s March sale was two exceptional watercolour portraits of W. G. Grace by Louisa Townsend, an inaugural member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters. She
had painted Grace in 1915, the year of his death, and this appeared as a frontispiece in his Memorial Biography, edited by Lords Hawke and Harris, together with Sir Home Gordon. The larger of the
two watercolours on sale at Knight’s was a very similar portrait, showing Grace in a striped dark suit. This fetched £20,000 on the hammer, while the exquisite miniature in a cameo oval
mount and ornate gilt frame realised £15,000.

Another outstanding feature of the auction was a fine collection of nine early 19th-century English School studies of young cricketers. These ranged from a somewhat naive oil of a youngster with
dog and bat, to a watercolour-and-pencil painting from the circle of Henry Edridge that showed a youth nonchalantly leaning on his bat. The prices also ranged widely, from a few hundred pounds to
nearly £5,000. Some were acquired by MCC. In Knight’s summer sale,
The Log of a Trip in the Earl of Sheffield’s Yacht, the Heloise, to Boulogne and back by “One of the
Team”, July 1890
had an estimate of £1,000–£1,500. When the gavel fell, bidding had reached an extraordinary £14,000. Also sold during the year were a couple of
important sets of photographs: nine sepia action prints of WG by the pioneer of sports photography in Britain, George Beldam; and an album belonging to Frank Gilligan. Each made £4,000.