Nothing to do with Adele, or Paul Hardcastle’s vicious satire on Vietnam, or even Rory Bremner’s subsequent parody likening it to David Gower’s batting average against the West Indies… just a number happy and sad, like all the rest. Richard H Thomas introduces the number 19…
Calm Down, It’s Only A Game.
“His fame will endure as long as cricket,” wrote Jack Pollard in Australian Cricket. “He was something out of Boys’ own paper” asserted Mihir Bose, and “as masculine as Tarzan” according to Ray Robinson. “A batsman of royal blood, and a shrewd and menacing bowler,” in the judgement of AG Moyes. Keith Miller, born in 1919, was Botham before Botham. He had Botham-like statistics too – a batting average of 37 and 170 wickets at 23 over 55 Tests put him right up there. But it was his spirit that everyone loved him for; modern PR men would have made millions from him. His dry humour and his wartime service in the RAAF helped him to not take cricket too seriously. When asked by Michael Parkinson about stress playing cricket, his reply was straight to the point: “Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse, playing cricket is not”.
Chip Off The Old Block
With Australia in something of a transition as they try to fashion a team to reclaim the top ranking they so sorely miss, a number of new guns have the chance to be part of the Baggy Green future. Of these, Shaun Marsh certainly didn’t waste his opportunity in making 141 against Sri Lanka at Kandy – the 19th Aussie to make a ton on Test debut. His father Geoff, himself an accomplished Test opener, was bursting with pride when he told The Australian: “When your own son plays for Australia for any parent it’s the most exciting time. Sitting here watching is bloody nerve-wracking but that has to be the highlight of my life watching Shaun get 100 on debut.”
Trigger Happy
Gloucestershire’s four-day home game against Glamorgan in July 2010 was a happy affair for the visitors. Aussie Mark Cosgrove (still missed in these parts by the way) and the 2012 skipper Mark Wallace both made second innings tons, with six overs of wily, foxy offspin by Robert Croft knocking over the Gloucester tail for a 176-run win. 18 batsmen in the match were despatched lbw by umpires Neil Mallender and Andy Hicks, including Alex Gidman, Ben Wright, Dean Cosker, Steve Kirby and Vikram Banjeree on two occasions each. Remarkably it wasn’t a record. In a 1953/54 match between Patiala and Delhi the umpires went one better.
A Sad Game Restarts
The cricket season of 1919 will be forever known as perhaps the most melancholy of all time. As the game recommenced following the Great War, seemingly a generation of players had been lost in service – Kent’s dual loss of Colin Blythe and Kenneth Hutchings was especially cruel, while Major Booth, Tibby Cotter, Reggie Schwartz were also among the dozens of first-class cricketers who perished. The rather low-key experiment of two-day matches was never repeated, and familiar names Wilfred Rhodes and George Gunn topped the averages at bowling and batting receptively. One of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year was Andy Ducat – a double international at football and cricket, and the only man to die while playing a match at Lord’s, in 1942 for Surrey Home Guard against Sussex Home Guard.
A Man For All Seasons
When Shiv Chanderpaul finally ends his Test career – and what a career it has been – the words “elegant”, “flowing” or “beautiful” are unlikely to feature in the tributes. Instead, there will undoubtedly be references to crabbiness and awkwardness. Hopefully too, there will be plenty of credit for the way that since his Test debut at 19, the man from Demerara has been the mainstay of an erratic and misfiring West Indian batting line-up, his idiosyncratic ways providing the most solid of backbones. But obduracy is only half the story; Mike Selvey described him as a “batting paradox…capable of playing the most startlingly incendiary innings while simultaneously the most stubborn batsman of his generation and perhaps of all-time”. The point is a good one; for all his stodgy crease occupation only Jack Gregory, Adam Gilchrist and Viv Richards have scored a Test ton in fewer balls than his 69-ball effort against the Aussies in 2002/3.
