Playing in the V

A commonplace book for cricket

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Be the boss, man, because if you don't think you are, no one else will, true huh true."

Sir Vivian Richards

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Wherever he went, he could part the sea.

Mark Nicholas on Viv Richards.

Here.

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Earlier, I referred to Viv the most charismatic cricketer of the age. Even now when he walks into a room, it fizzes. Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar have an aura; Richards has electricity. Seve Ballesteros had it; they say Ayrton Senna too. Tiger Woods has it and Muhammad Ali had it like no other.

Mark Nicholas, here.

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Geology and cricket

David Holford scored a century for West Indies in the Lord’s Test of 1966 in a partnership of 274 with his cousin, Garfield Sobers. In the days when touring teams and media were officially entertained together, I met Holford at a reception at the start of an England tour of the West Indies. He had graduated from the University of the West Indies with a knowledge of the region’s geology and geography. ‘Barbados is made of coral limestone,’ Holford said. ‘No other West Indian island is, except for Antigua, which is partly coral.’

As Holford explained, the Windward Islands, such as St Vincent, Dominica and St Lucia, are volcanic, with black sand, high rainfall, very little flat land, slow pitches; Trinidad and Guyana have alluvial soil, and slow pitches again. The coral of Barbados, on the other hand, allows rain to drain through the soil into the underground aquifers, and the turf has only to be tended for a cricket ball to bounce consistently and speed through to the wicketkeeper.

Berry, Scyld. Cricket: The Game of Life: Every reason to celebrate 

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What W.G. did was to unite in his mighty self all the good points of all the good players, and to make utility the criterion of style. He founded the modern theory of batting by making forward and back play of equal importance, relying neither on the one nor the other, but on both...He turned the old one-stringed instrument into a many -chorded lyre. And in addition, he made his execution equal his invention. All of us now have the instrument, but we lack his execution.

Ranji, The Jubilee Book of Cricket

Extracted from John Arlott’s Concerning Cricket, an essay called ‘The Old Man.’

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There is one great landmark that separates the old batting from the new - the appearance of Dr. W.G. Grace in the cricket world. He revolutionised batting. He turned it from an accomplishment to a science. Before W.G. batsmen were of two kinds - a batsman played a forward game or he played a back game.

Ranji, Jubilee book of Cricket

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Without spilling a drop

“According to one of their founding myths, the leader of a group of Parsis who had landed in Gujarat went to the local ruler and asked permission to stay. When the ruler asked why he should let the Parsis in, when his land was already packed with people, the Parsi leader took a glass of water filled to the brim and placed a coin in it, without spilling a drop. This is how the Parsis would fit in, without disturbance.”

Without the Parsis would Cricket be as popular a game it is in India now? We indeed owe this dwindling community a debt of gratitude.

Scyld Berry, Bombay Mix

Cricket: The game of life

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One saw, as one rarely does, the chinks of light between what are often casually elided—the Australian cricket team, Cricket Australia and cricket itself, the game and its place in Australian life.

Gideon Haigh, Crossing the Line

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Not since W.G.Grace has cricket produced a man who so combined technical skill, concentration, determination - or who did so on so carefully planned a course. I doubt that cricket will see such another - for cricket has a way of getting under a man's skin. I do not think cricket is under Bradman's skin, but I believe that it is under his skull - in close control. Therefore he has missed something of cricket that less gifted and less memorable men have gained. How, I wonder, would Don Bradman define happiness?

John Arlott on Don Bradman

Concerning Cricket, 1949.

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Australia and ‘mateship.’

This extract is from Sycld Berry’s book “Cricket: The game of life.”

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We are faced with Australian batting, bowling, fielding, captaincy and Australianism. Australianism means single minded determination to win - to win within the laws, but, if necessary, to the last limit within them.

John Arlott, Concerning Cricket (1949), essay titled “Australianism.”

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But Bramall Lane is where I am most alive. This hum is the hum of my universe.

Scyld Berry, ‘Cricket: The game of life’

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For a Somerset and Australia supporter in the 1970s and '80s, the King was problematic

May 18, 1980. West Indies v Northamptonshire. A tour game. The world's best batsman walks off the ground after scoring 131. As he leaves the field, he spits out his trademark chewing gum. It lands on the floor, about five feet away from me. I'm nine years old; it's the first time I've seen him, outside of the TV and newspapers, and I don't know whether to pick the gum up, frame it and put it on my bedroom wall, or to call the cops and have him arrested for littering.

Issac Vivian Alexander Richards scored a hundred less than 20 miles from where I lived, and I wasn't sure whether to cheer or boo.

Words belong to Crispin Andrews.

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Batsmanship, I've always felt, it isn't about hitting the fieldsman. One of the guys who I felt would find the gaps as good as anyone else would be BC, Brian Lara, and that's what batsmanship is about. You find the gaps. If you hit a fieldsman two or three times in that over, you can't afford to do that, you find a way of avoiding that fieldsman, that's what batsmanship is about.

Viv Richards

P.c. Getty Images

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There are always signs. These include the sense that the bat is an extension of the hands and arms; the head is still at the point of delivery and the body shape sound at the moment of the stroke; that the intent is to score as first option and defend at second; and that the feet move as an expression of this mind.

Mark Nicholas, on Ollie Pope.

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Then I saw MacLaren and Trumper, and they stirred me to art and caused me to see visions

Neville Cardus

‘A Cardus for all seasons’

Introduction: The most fascinating game in the world. Page 13.