Collapso Cricket

These are golden times for run scoring we hear, heavier bats (although not all of them Salix’s, or should that be Salixae?), shorter boundaries, inferior seam bowling, Jupiter aligned with Venus. Everyone from David Gower to David Catchpole knows that bowlers are supposed to have it hard. However it takes quite a few overs of plundering to change a game in favour of the batting team, whereas one ball can turn an innings completely from a bowlers point of view. That ball could happen at any time, and the consequences are devastating.

The total batting collapse must be the captain’s worst nightmare, other than realising he has no-one to do teas on the morning of the match, or that he has accidentally selected Paul Sibley to boost his teams fielding ability. A procession of the finest talent at his disposal has been hand picked in anticipation of runs a plenty but is instead producing a scene more reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan, batsman running around blindly grabbing at bats and protective equipment and cries of ‘f****** hell’ ringing out from the changing room as the crack of ball on stump can be heard like shells exploding left, right and centre. This kind of display can really drive a captain to start pulling their hair out (which could be why John Monk only lasted half a season in charge of the third team). One only needs to look at the transformation of Mr Matt Wallace from mild mannered man at the beginning of his stint as second team captain to the hat throwing, expletive uttering curmudgeon we saw at the end of the two years. This ‘incredible hulk’ like change can only be put down to constantly having to walk to the crease under pressure at 100–4 or in extreme cases 40–4 and have to single handedly pull the side out of the mire.

Matt is not the only 2’s captain that has had to deal with batting collapses. New incumbent Stuart Elliott is only 6 or 7 games into his tenure as skipper has already had to witness three such batting collapses, the most alarming coming last week with a vomit inducing first over leaving the score at 1-3 (Later to recover to the awe inspiring 6-5). The first team have also experienced this feeling fairly recently when no-one could seem to hold up the Woodford Wells bowling and the whole team were dismissed for under 120. Of course its not just the Leigh that can fold like an fat bloke after being hit by a Ricky Hatton body shot, the panic can grip any team at any time in any place. A pumped up James Braithwaite reduced Hadleigh from 116-4 to 124-8 last season. And ‘Nandralone’ Braithers had Orsett on the ropes at 50-5 the following week.

International sides can witness these alarming tumbles of wickets too. Current England test match captain Michael Vaughan’s first taste of International cricket was in South Africa at the Wanderers when he walked out to face Allan Donald with England in the much less than lordly position of 2-4. In a recent Test in New Zealand Mohammed Sami ripped through the home team to rocket them from 127-5 to 131 all out. Even the true great teams experience it, the Australian team of the early 90’s reads like a who’s who of great batting talent, but a team that consisted of Boon, Taylor, Langer, Waugh, Martyn, Border and Healy was torn apart by a pop gun New Zealand attack lead by ‘Is that Shoaib Akhtar? No its Danny Morrison’ Danny Morrison, leaving the mighty canary yellow boys in deep canary poop at 48-6.

How do you stop these seismic shifts in a match? The truth is no-one really knows, you can be skiing along peacefully with your two openers in, crashing the ball to all parts of whatever lovely ground you happen to be frequenting that day until suddenly someone coughs too loudly and boom the whole mountain is moving and your side is half buried in the avalanche. Many people seek answers in superstition, remaining in the same chair or refusing to change the umpires if the wickets suddenly stop falling, as if the slightest movement or change in surroundings will trigger another landslide. Others rub lucky beads / horseshoes / rabbits feet to ensure that the side reach three figures smoothly. Former captains chuckle that it is someone else that now has to cope with the failing of the team rather than themselves, and former former captains just sit in the corner rocking slightly muttering the word ‘application’ over and over again until someone offers them another pint.

The pain and the suffering ...

Cricket, it’s the game we play, the game we all love…..however…..from time to time events unfold that lead us to question whether this ‘love’ is perhaps misplaced. Would we be better off playing golf or maybe lawn bowls (we’d still get to wear whites!). Would these games humiliate us in the same way cricket does? Many say that cricket is a cruel mistress, I would go slightly further and say that cricket is a cruel mistress that has just emptied our bank account, cut up our ties and callously murdered our pet goldfish.

Cricket can be truly heartless, in almost all areas of the game you are under pressure and at any moment the cricket gods can swoop in and pull your pants down. As a batsman the next ball you could be out in any number of shameful ways, as a bowler the next ball could be dispatched back over your head (bowlers who are unfortunate enough to be bowling to Waller have a very much heightened fear of that), and as a fielder the next ball you could mis-field, drop a catch or just generally fail to do the job you have been put there to do.

A dropped catch is possibly the most embarrassing of these mistakes, after all even Monty Panesar knows that ‘catches win matches’. The bowler has strained every sinew, sent down a ball that has fooled the batsman into a false shot (more likely is that someone has bowled a great big juicy long hop that in a frenzied attempt to smite to the another hemisphere the batsman has hit in the air). All you have to do is……catch it. Of course this is always easier said than done. Even people who are paid to play every week drop easy chances, everyone can recall Hershelle Gibbs contriving to drop Steve Waugh (what is he good for) in the ’99 world cup, or even more recently Shane Warne dropping Kevin Pietersen at the Oval in ’05 when the ‘Englishman’ went on to score a hundred to secure the famous series. In recent weeks the spectre of dropped catches has raised its ugly head again. The second team has been especially afflicted by them recently. 6 catches went down against Orsett, Messers Willson and Wallace put down one each against Westcliff, both batsman going on to get 50, and possibly the easiest catch so far this season was put down by ‘pea sheller’ Brown this week (closely followed by the second easiset catch that also went down in the very next over). There is also the game in which Richard dropped the same first team batsmen three times on his way to a hundred, and chances going to Damian going down that are too numerous to mention.

There is absolutely nothing that anyone can say to lift someones spirits after a dropped catch, words of encouragement and various ‘head up’ comments make that horrible sick feeling go away. They fester. I’m sure right now we can all think of at least 5 catches we have dropped that really hurt. These things not only aggravate and annoy, they also simply humiliating and the caning in store after the game is almost worse than the act itself.


Possibly the only thing to rival a dropped catch in terms of sheer gut-wrenching embarrassment is the golden duck. Having secured the company of the LOSCC duck award for the 2005 season myself, (although none of the contributing 0’s was a first baller) I can say without fear of contradiction that it’s a game is a lonely place with a zero against your name. It’s also not the best idea to declare before any game that you have yet to record a duck for x amount of games, the cricketing gods are a fickle bunch and any undue bravado on your behalf is liable to bring the lightning fork of justice crashing into your stumps along with the ball. At Ardleigh Green last season a Leigh batting display was coming apart at the seams (as it the normal way of these things) and as Ben Giles strapped his pads on he was heard to remark “I havent had a duck all season”. Little did he know that far above him the cricket gods (longer on memory than Brian Pettitt and bigger on sense of humour than Simon Wallace in Wickford’s away dressing room) had collectively begun rubbing their hands together with glee at another scalp in the offing. And Lo did it come to pass that first ball Ben’s middle stump was unceremoniously ripped from the turf much to the amusement of a) his team mates, because there is nothing funnier to onlookers than someone who has just said they haven’t got a duck getting one, and b) the cricket gods who chuckled to themselves before skipping off to another ground to seek out another victim.

Add in mis-fields, running a team mate out and having your bowling thrashed all around the place this is surely a game for masochists with a very high pain threshold, and I for one say, just bring it!

Do we need a Messiah?

It is a fairly universal rule that every cricket team needs at least one player that is a little bit different from the rest. I don't mean someone that bats with no gloves on or can only take to the field once he has sacrifised a small animal of some kind, I mean someone that can, to coin a particularly hackneyed phrase, 'turn a game'. These players can turn a certain bore draw at Benfleet or Stanford into an easy victory by smashing a swashbuckling 70 or bagging 4 quick wickets. These players are like gold dust. We all remember their names from times past:

Warne
Botham
Richards
Muralitharan
Akram
Marshall
Gilchrist
Thorpe

Performers of this ilk have an even more devastating effect in club cricket. In the International arena the players are all extremely talented, with only a hairs breadth between someone right on their game and someone just off the pace. In club cricket the gap between the best player and the rest can be as wide as a Steve Harmison loosener. This is why it matters more being able to call on a 'Messiah' (for want of a better word you understand) to come in and, from time to time, bale out the side.

For a local club an overseas player is always handy to have (Ray Clarence excluded) and looking back on the recent past of Leigh the names speak for themselves: Maynard, Bryan, Adelaine and Villani et al they have all been big performers for the Leigh cause. They also provide a little bit of glamour with a weird accent a different outlook on life and possibly differing social attitudes (I'm sure we all know by now what Maynard did on that girls face)

There are dangers in having one big performers for the side though; the rest of the team can if they are not careful grow to rely on these players for all the runs and all the wickets. Hadleigh's first team is a case in point, de-Gandhi the buggers and they would struggle to bat their way out of a fruit pastilles packet (although Tim Lowes does have a very shiny bat, pity he cant tuck his shirt in, scruffy ****) Other players can also feel slightly inferior to their more glamorous big hitting colleagues. It is difficult to think about the strange relationship between John Monk and Simon Wallace without it becoming clear that one is grossly intimidated by the others style and calm assurance at the crease, to add to his malaise Simon also possibly feels slightly jealous of the broad accent and the whiplash square cut. It is a normal human emotion to feel valued and we all want to have our contribution noted. Just watching Stubby in the club after he gets any score over 40 to see how true that is.

The 'Messiah' sometimes has the more positive effect of inspiring others to try to match the ‘Messiah's' attributes and performances. There seems to be more of a buzz around the club when an overseas player is around. In the same way that we try to copy our heroes as kids, imitation, even amongst adults, is still the sincerest form of flattery (psychotic stalkers aside).

The 'art' of sledging

This weeks most talked about topic at Leigh on Sea has got to be the ‘art’ of sledging. I use the word ‘art’ under advisement from self appointed sledgemaster Dave Clarke. It is still an issue that divides opinion. At what level of cricket is sledging ok? Are there players you shouldn’t try to provoke? As Sean Elliott can now testify younger and younger players are attempting to put the batsman off his stride (and as again Sean can testify, given the right batsman it works).

What kind of tactics can fielders use to strike doubt into the mind of the batsman?

Again I will use words quoted to me ‘Take the most obscure insult in your mind, multiply it by 5 and then say it……..or if you cant think of anything obsure just call him a ~~~~’. Is this the best way of distracting a batsman though? Another member of the club has been known to use the bore batsman out through inane conversation with the opposing crease occupier. Asking a range of banal questions from ‘How much did your bat cost?’ through ‘What kind of toothpaste do you use’ and ‘Whats the fastest bowler you’ve ever faced’ to the watery grave of ‘If you were trapped in a room with only a set of nail clippers and a banana how would you escape?’. I know of one batsman that actually spontaneously combusted out of sheer frustration.

Fast bowlers also have a fine way with words, in a test match in the West Indies legendary quick Malcolm Marshall was bowling to David Boon who had played and missed a few, Marshall asked Boon "Now David, Are you going to get out now or am I going to have to bowl around the wicket and kill you?"

The sledging in today’s game is not strictly the field of wicketkeepers and fast bowlers, batsman can also deliver telling words to those attempting to knock them over. One famous tale comes from a Sunday game against Wickford and their South African fast bowler Mr Quinton Friend. Mr Friend was being particularly unfriendly to our top order using speed and accuracy in a completely unneccessary destruction of our main run scorers. Tim Hewitt, who had been watching the carnage from the non strikers end without a helmet on, found himself on strike to the speedster. Hewitt then smashed the South African back over his head and whilst the South African gave him the fast bowler stare, Tim then informed Quinton that ‘I’m a third team player, if you cant get me out you must be s***’

Another example of this is again from a Test match this time Australia vs New Zealand . Adam Parore who was relatively new to cricket came to the crease played & missed the first ball. Mark Waugh who was standing at second slip said "Ohh, I remember you from a couple years ago in Australia . You were s*** then, you ' re f***ing useless now". Parore- (Turning around replied) "Yeah, that ' s me & when I was there you were going out with that old, ugly sl*t & now I hear you ' ve married her. You dumb **** ".

You can always sledge the fielders themselves back if they are giving it to you, batsman have been known to punch the ball past a fielder and yell out ‘there’s two there that fat f*** cant run’

Sledging is seemingly here to stay, so either put up, shut up or get sledging!

The Voice