In these testing times, I realise
that there are FAR more important matters than bemoaning the lack of this
year’s cricket season (well, probably) but, nevertheless, I am REALLY missing
my cricket!
Never fear, my lovely brother has stepped in to save the day (he
really is pretty amazing).
Michael Henderson’s book “That Will Be England Gone”
(a line from Larkin’s poem ‘Going, Going’) arrived in last Friday’s post… no note, no clue as to who might have sent it
(but it could only have been from my brother Alan!).
Henderson is a cricket writer and
arts correspondent (mirroring the career/interests of one of my cricket-writing
heroes, Neville Cardus). I’ve come across articles from him in the past, but
don’t really know an awful lot about him. Although he’s nearly ten years
younger than me, I think we could both call ourselves ‘grumpy old men’ as far
as some of our ‘traditional’ views on cricket are concerned.
Henderson wrote the book in the
knowledge that the 2020 season would see the introduction of a new tournament,
‘The Hundred’, designed to attract an audience of younger people to the game.
Ten 10-ball overs per innings featuring ‘eight brand-new city-based teams’. The
County Championship – which both Henderson and I see as the ‘proper’ form of
cricket – would be reduced to something of a farce, with games shoe-horned in
to take place at the very start and end of the season. ‘The Hundred’ and
Twenty-20 ‘pyjama’ cricket’ (as some of us have described it) would effectively
take over the prime June-August slots, alongside some of the Test matches.
Cardus used to say that there could be no summer English summer without
cricket. He’d be horrified by what’s happening… and so are Henderson and I.
We both share the view that this ‘bish-bash’
version isn’t cricket. Yes, it might be entertaining as a ‘spectacle’, but it
DEFINITELY isn’t cricket. The trouble is that we also both accept that the
county championship clubs couldn’t survive financially if they had to depend
purely on income from Test Matches and championship games. We also both share
the fear that the new competitions might ultimately lead to the demise of Test
Match cricket (the ultimate version of the game) altogether… or, at the very
least, turn it into a dumbed-down adaptation (probably reduced to 4 days’
duration, rather than 5, because batsman were no longer sufficiently capable of
staying at the wicket for any significant period).
I’ve blogged at length on the
demise of English cricket (well, the county championship anyway) over the
years, so I’ll resist the temptation to add yet further ranting! Here’s just
one example from last year!
For this book, Henderson
revisited several much-loved places last season to reflect on how the game had
changed since he attended his first ‘senior’ game of cricket in 1965.
Inevitably, many of his cricketing heroes were mine too and so, not
surprisingly (despite him being SO much younger than me!), we shared similar
memories. His background (public school educated at Repton) is very different
to mine, but we do share a common love for cricket and the arts. He sees public
schools as almost the ‘only hope’ for cricket’s future stars – there’s hardly
any cricket played at state schools these days (and local cricket clubs have to
compete with other summer sports, including bloomin’ football, that don’t
require giving up entire days to them). I hate to admit it, but I think he’s
probably right – with all the consequences that would come with this.
Yes, the book is something of a romantic, nostalgic (almost lyrical)
reflection on his life - and, yet, it’s much, much more than that.
I love the stories+reflections and it’s frequently very amusing. He and I don’t agree on
everything (surprise, surprise), but I SO enjoyed reading it; it brought
back LOTS of memories; and it has massively helped me cope with being unable to sit next to the boundary rope. x
Postscipt:
What came as a lovely bonus was this reference to conductor Daniel Harding (our
families are very close friends from our Oxford days) in the book’s ‘Postlude’
on one of Henderson’s regular visits to Munich: “Some of those visitors
occasionally play cricket in the Englischer Garten. In July 1996, I was one of
them, turning out for a London XI against MCC (Munich Cricket Club) on a
matting pitch inside a running track on the southern fringe of the park. The
next day I drove across the Austrian border with Daniel Harding, the young
English conductor, to hear Simon rattle direct the Vienna Philharmonic
Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival. Eleven years later Danny and I returned to
the festival. He was now conducting that great orchestra himself, in ‘The
Marriage of Figaro’ no less, and I was listening at quarters that could not
have been closer. ‘Sit in the pit’, he said. ‘Wear something dark, and don’t
stand up to peer at the audience’. Shades of Noël Coward’s instructions to his actors!”
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