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Not Dark Yet #275: The tail-end of cricket

1/6/2018

9 Comments

 
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I’m not sure how many of us remember the tales of Jennings and Darbishire, written by Anthony Buckeridge in the last century. I read them, or at least the first few, in the ‘50s, enchanted by, and jealous of, the idealized version of my own prep school.
 
A large part of the appeal of the stories was the wordplay and jokes, and I remember one to this day. Jennings has a pet rat, which he keeps in a shoe box as I recall. He is discussing the rat with his amiable housemaster – Mr Carter? – and tells him, “I call it Gloucestershire, sir, because it’s got a long tail.”
 
If you are not smiling, I should explain that, in the cricket county championship of that year, Gloucestershire was noted for its poor batting. Batsmen 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 were incapable of reaching double figures and this was known, in cricketing parlance, as a “long tail”.
 
Don’t worry if you don’t get it; I haven’t heard the expression in years. But my point is that, back in 1957, I and all my fellow 8 year old chums did get it, just as we also got Buckeridge’s Latin puns! Cricket was part of our lives. We knew the scores each day; we knew who was top of the championship, and who was top of the averages.
 
I don’t know any of these today. The county scoreboards are not easily come by. Most of the time, one is not even aware that games are being played. There is no structure to the season. A four day county game or two is followed by a random assortment of one day games, one night games, and day-night games. And we are told that, next year, we shall have yet another competition of 10 overs of 10 balls. Or something like that anyway.

Even the test series is being subjected to the same cavalier treatment of the schedule. Starting today is the second test. And then, nothing until August – apart from ODIs. It’s madness. 

Matthew Engel, once the editor of Wisden, the cricketing bible, wrote recently about this lack of a season-long narrative, attributing his falling out of love with cricket to this vandalism. He used a religious metaphor: he still believes, but no longer attends church with any regularity or enjoyment. And he contrasts cricket with baseball, referring to his daily check on the box scores from St Louis (unaccountably he is a Cardinals fan) and wondering whether next year’s proposed two game series between the Sox and the Yankees may remind English sports fans of what they have lost, certainly what they are missing.
 
I suspect it will. Like Engel, I have embraced the game of baseball. And although I am currently listening to Test Match Special from Headingley, and although I managed a day the Oval test last year, it is baseball that keeps my summer on the daily straight and narrow.

The prospect of rain at Headingley could well England’s best chance of avoiding defeat in the test match.
 
But whatever happens, I fear that English cricket is already facing an innings defeat.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Been listening to the Dead’s run at the Warfield in October 1980. Not my favourite period by any means, but these are very good shows and the work of the digital engineers has worked wonders with some iffy SBDs and audience recordings. Also, on the 11th, John Cippolina makes a guest appearance.
9 Comments
Si
1/6/2018 11:54:55

All too true. But don’t quite get your dislike of cricketing formats which emulate baseball with your love of baseball.

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JohnH
1/6/2018 14:25:35

Just heard the score. 97 for 7. Assumed England is batting!

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Allan
1/6/2018 15:39:47

Isn't it all about marketing? There is supposed to be a new regime at Lord's. Younger, less traditional, looking for change and prepared to embrace it. But the marketing strategy is flawed. T20 is just slogging, not cricket. I think I would go with what I infer you prefer. "Proper" cricket. And baseball. But first and foremost, proper cricket.

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Jon
1/6/2018 15:44:03

County cricket and Latin, eh? You're ahead of your time, max.

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Nick
2/6/2018 08:18:15

Recommend Ed Smith's Playing Hard Ball re the relationship between the first cousins cricket and baseball.

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Martin Skinner
10/6/2018 09:00:48

Well the Glouctershire tail may have to wag today as my Kent were 297 for 4 against them after the first day of the latest occasional round of County Championship games yesterday, enabling Kent to keep up some pressure on your Warwickshire at the top of Division 2, with the latter closing at 22 for 2 having bowled Glamorgan out for 220. Everything to play for.

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Richard Pearce
16/6/2018 21:06:26

Hi Max. Yes I remember Jennings and Darbishire very well. They contended that to be a successful literary detective you must have a two syllable first name and a one syllable second name (bear with me). They cited Sexton Blake , Sherlock Holmes , Falcon Swift and a host of other largely forgotten names. And so their (momentarily) legendary detective was born ................ one Flixton Slick !
Sorry to say almost every modern example ( John Rebus, Jane Tennison etc) seems to prove the opposite. As i ve said before, I must get out more.

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Richard Pearce link
8/9/2022 10:01:15

And as a tribute I took the great Flixton's name for my (admittedly largely unused) Twitter account . Great books. I also liked their various attempts at using code. I remember Venables was "Selbanev"- very cold War.

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    Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father, grandfather and son. Resident in Warwick, England.

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