Cricket - The loneliness of an ignored player

V Ramnarayan in Cricinfo

"The most miserable experience of your cricket career would be touring abroad with the Indian team and not getting to play a single match." The man who spoke these words had kept wicket in all of India's five Tests in the West Indies in 1971.

I had got into the star-studded SBI team when P Krishnamurthy was touring the West Indies, and when I first met him on his return to Hyderabad, after India's first series win in the Caribbean, he was brimming with confidence. Happily for me, he had liked what he saw of my bowling and lent me great support in my quest for a regular place in the team as an offspinner.

But this was five years later, and Murthy was no longer quite the impressive wicketkeeper he had been as a member of Ajit Wadekar's triumphant team. In fact, after his debut series he never played another Test match, with first Farrokh Engineer and later Syed Kirmani replacing him in the XI. He was part of the squad that went on tours of New Zealand and West Indies in 1975-76, and he barely got a game on either trip.

A similar fate befell young Karnataka batsman Sudhakar Rao, who had impressed the selectors with a double-century against Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy. He never played Test cricket for India despite scoring tons of runs in domestic cricket.

Murthy had been specific about the loneliness and travails of an Indian cricketer on tour if he wasn't in the playing XI, but I wonder if it could be very different for players of other nationalities, unless the team management handles the situation differently--with tact and genuine understanding of the player's psychology.

I think Murthy felt left out and unwanted during the long tour, and that was perhaps the failure of the tour management.

When the India Under-19 team won the World Cup in 2000, Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan and Arjun Yadav did not get a single game as the team kept winning every round and there was no scope for changes. The youngsters must have been treated very well during the championship because they came back quite cheerful. Winning of course helps, and I believe much of team spirit is fostered by the habit of winning rather than the other way around.

Is your loyalty to the team tested when you are regularly kept out and unfairly so, at least in your mind? How difficult is it to keep up your morale and enjoy the success of your team and the company of your team-mates? Well-managed teams seem to prove successful in keeping the reserve players in good mental and physical shape. The captain and coach play vital roles in this.

The Indian team in recent times has been quite effective in this regard if you go by the way players like Amit Mishra managed to stay positive enough while on the reserve bench and made the best use of their chances, however belated.

A spectacular example from recent history has been that of Ajinkya Rahane, who waited for 16 Tests as a reserve before making his Test debut. This was a tribute as much to the player's sterling mental qualities as to the way the management must have handled him.

I had a personal taste of loneliness during the 1975-76 domestic season, when as a member of the South Zone squad, I sat out one tour game against Sri Lanka, followed by a Duleep Trophy game and a Deodhar Trophy match, both against Central Zone. We were 16 of us, and everyone except me played at least one match for the zone in that fortnight or so. Some of the seniors were not very kindly disposed towards me, and I felt rather low in spirits, when, as 12th man for the one-day match, I was told I would carry drinks but fellow reserve Kirmani would replace an injured fielder. Sure enough someone got injured, but there was no sign of Kirmani. I ran on to the field only to be called back frantically as by now Kiri was charging on to the ground. On my way back, a spectator in the pavilion gave me a dirty look and called me a bastard with unmistakable venom. I did not know this guy from Adam, but I will recognise him any time anywhere, even though the incident took place 40 years ago. My mood did not exactly brighten when I received the news that I had been dropped for the Duleep and Deodhar finals.

I experienced yet another low when I was the only player among 33 in an Indian probables camp at Chepauk not to be picked for the upcoming Duleep Trophy, the unofficial trial before the 1977 tour of Australia. The South Zone team had been picked at the ground where we were training, and I felt as if I had been slapped.

To come back to my ethical question: was my loyalty to my team tested? It came pretty close, but in the first instance, my Bangalore room-mates, Narasimha Rao and Jyotiprasad, not to mention our daily visitor, a diminutive genius named GR Viswanath, kept my spirits up with their unstinting friendship. In the second, young wicketkeeper Bharath Reddy brought the South Zone skipper S Venkataraghavan to my hotel room, and they both consoled me, with Venkat explaining that he had not been involved in the selection process.

I have long wondered about the effect of exclusion on a cricketer's psyche and the damage it can do to morale, team spirit and loyalty. I know my late friend Krishnamurthy was quite a wreck after a couple of long, lonely tours, at a time when we had less understanding of such troubles as depression. At the same time, I feel such factors as resilience, the comfort you can draw from the kind words of your colleagues, and the caring guidance of coaches and mentors can all help a player stay in the fight. Indian cricket seems to be faring quite well in this aspect of management - a healthy development in its history.

'The wrist is a forgotten area of spin bowling'

By Scott Oliver in Cricinfo

Former England offspinner Pat Pocock recalls his career: escaping rioters in Guyana, being mentored by Jim Laker, and captaining Sylvester Clarke


Pat Pocock (left), as Surrey's deputy president in 2014, presents certificates to members who had been with the club for 60 or more years © PA Photos



Taking seven wickets in 11 balls was a complete freak. Every time they nicked it, it went to hand; every time they played across the line, they were out lbw; every time it went in the air, it was caught. I can honestly say that I bowled much better in a match against West Indies in Jamaica, on a rock-hard wicket that was like marble and with a 55-yard boundary straight, when I bowled 50-odd overs and got 0 for 152. Every player in our side came up to shake my hand in our dressing room because I bowled so well.

Colin Cowdrey was a lovely man, a fine player, but he was not the strongest of characters and was very, very easily influenced as captain.

If I had to choose between sidespin and bounce, I'd pick bounce every time.

I played in Manchester against a very strong Australian side - Bill Lawry, Ian Chappell, Doug Walters, Ian Redpath, Bob Cowper, Paul Sheahan, Barry Jarman - a fabulous side. I bowled 33 overs, 6 for 79, and I'm left out the next game. I'd just turned 21. I thought: what way is that to bring on a young spinner? They brought Derek Underwood in.

John Woodcock said that the three people in the world he'd seen that enjoyed the game the most were Derek Randall, Pat Pocock and Garry Sobers.

A few years ago a guy came up to me and said, "I've got a night at the Royal Albert Hall in September. Do you fancy doing the opening spot?" It was blacked out, with two pin-spot lights into the middle of the stage. "Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome former Surrey and England cricketer, Pat Pocock." I walk out - 3000 people there, black-tie job - and sang "For Once in Your Life" by Frank Sinatra. That gave me a bigger buzz than playing in front of 100,000 at Eden Gardens.

Getting knocked out by Unders was no crime, but in those days he was nowhere near the bowler that he became. In those days, they used to have the Man-of-the-Match awards split into two parts: bowler of the match and batsman of the match. Basil D'Oliveira won the batsman of the match and I won the bowler of the match [in Manchester]. We come to the next Test at Lord's and we were both left out of the side.

Jim Laker and Tony Lock were great bowlers, but the thing that made them even greater was, they bowled on hugely helpful wickets. Not only uncovered wickets but underprepared wickets as well. They turned square. They were masters of their craft, but even more so because of the pitches they played on. You had Laker and Lock, [Alec] Bedser and [Peter] Loader - great bowlers, bowling on result wickets, backed up with good batting, and because of that, Surrey won seven championships on the trot.



"The most unfortunate thing about my career was that I didn't play a single Test match between the ages of 29 and 37" © PA Photos





I got Sobers out nine times, but never in Test matches. I'd have liked to have got him out in a Test match.

I went over to Transvaal, only for one season, just to see the country. I enjoyed it enormously. The cricket was very strong; a bit lopsided - I didn't see many spinners - but lots of quick bowlers and batsmen.

A great big thick stone hit Tony Lock on the back of the head in Guyana [in 1967-68]. We'd just won the series and the crowd were rioting. Gold Leaf, the sponsors, were providing transport. I was with Locky and John Snow, and when the car eventually got through the crowd, there was a hail of bricks and sticks and pebbles and all sorts. We got in and the driver put his hand on the horn and drove straight at the crowd, with everyone leaping out of the way. We got about 100 yards before we stopped in the middle of more rioters throwing missiles toward the ground, thinking the players were still there. We were actually right in the middle of them, and we all slipped down under the seats and carried on.

The best three players I bowled at were Richards, Richards and Sobers. Barry first, then Viv.

I was one of the bigger spinners of the ball in the country. I used to bowl "over the top", so I made the ball bounce a lot. If you put spin and bounce, with control, into your skill set, then you're going to do well on good wickets.

The most unfortunate thing about my career was that I didn't play a single Test match between the ages of 29 and 37. If you interview any spinner that played for a long time, they'll tell you those were their prime years. When I was in the best form of my life, I didn't get picked.

I never got out as nightwatchman for England, and I'm quite proud about that.

Day in, day out, in county cricket, Fred Titmus was the best offspinner I ever saw. He was a fantastic bowler, with control and flight and a good swinger. But in Test matches, because he wasn't a big spinner of the ball - and bearing in mind you played on pitches that were prepared for five days, not three - you didn't often have to worry about Fred.

Since I was about five, I can't ever remember thinking I wanted to do anything else except play cricket. But all I was at five was keen. It was only about 12 when I thought perhaps I had a chance of playing professionally.



Pocock is congratulated for taking a wicket in Barbados, 1967-68 © Getty Images





I was very lucky. If you think that the average person in the England side today has probably played between 70 and 100 first-class matches - I played 554, so that's quite a lot.

I had four people who helped me on my way up: Laker, Lock, Titmus and Lance Gibbs. Among them they had 7500 first-class wickets. I had lots of help and advice. Who have the players got today? Is it surprising we've barely got a spinner good enough for Test cricket?

Mike Brearley was the best captain I played under, but the person I most enjoyed playing under was David Gower, by far. When I played under David, I'd had over 500 first-class matches. He knew that I knew more about my bowling, and offspin bowling generally, than he would ever know, so he just let me get on with it. I didn't want to have to fight my captain to get the field I wanted.

The most important part of your body for deceiving the batsman in the flight is your wrist. The wrist is a forgotten area of spin bowling.

When I was first picked for England I was very much aware that there were a lot of senior players around. There haven't been too many times in English cricket history when there were more great players in the side: Colin Cowdrey, Kenny Barrington, John Edrich, Geoff Boycott, Tom Graveney, Jim Parks, Alan Knott, John Snow.

Dougie Walters was a very difficult player to bowl at for a spinner.

I was Titmus' understudy. He was a quality bowler, but on that [1967-68 West Indies] tour he didn't bowl very well. I played against the Governor's XI, virtually the Test team, and got six wickets for not many runs. Then I played against Barbados, who had nine Test players in their side, and got another six wickets. Suddenly all the press are writing: Is Pat Pocock going to get preferred to Fred? I thought I might be in line for a debut, and then of course he had the accident.

Apart from Illy [Ray Illingworth], there's no other offspin bowler who's played more first-class matches than me.

Playing in Madras in '72-73, I bowled a slightly short ball to Ajit Wadekar, who got back and cut it for four. Next over, I bowled another one, slightly short, turned slowly, and again he cuts it square. I said to Tony Lewis, the skipper, "I want a man out on the leg side in the corner." He said, "But he's just hit you for two fours square!" I said, "I know, but I'm not going to give him any more balls to hit. I'm going to bowl a stump straighter and a yard fuller, but if I do, I want that fielder out there." He started to grumble and shake his head. It was his third Test match and I'd played a couple of hundred first-class matches. I said, "Don't argue. Just f****** do it. I've got a reason."

The best offspinner I've ever seen, on Test match wickets, was Gibbs, because the spin and bounce he got were second to none. He'd always hit the shoulder or splice of the bat.



Pocock sings to spectators after a county day's play at The Oval © PA Photos





I didn't ever want to play for any other county, but if I had done, I'd have liked to have played for Glamorgan - not only because I was born in Wales but when you play for them you feel as though you're playing for more than a county. You feel as though you're playing for a country.

Sylvester Clarke was the most feared man in world cricket. Viv Richards went into print saying he didn't like facing him. Viv says he didn't wear a helmet. He bloody did: he wore one twice against Surrey when Sylvester Clarke was playing. Fearsome, fearsome bowler. I played against Roberts, Holding, Daniel, Garner, Marshall, Patterson, Walsh, Ambrose - all of them. I faced Sylvs in the nets on an underprepared wicket, no sightscreen, no one to stop him overstepping. There was nobody as fearsome as Clarkey was. And everybody knew it.

I captained Surrey because I felt I had to. I'd done it 11 years before I was given the official captain's job. I enjoyed the game too much and I didn't want anything to take my enjoyment away. But I looked around and thought there was no one else who could do it. We came second, which isn't too bad, although I did have a guy called Sylvester Clarke up my sleeve.

Laker became a good friend. We worked together on commentary. He didn't come up to me and say, "You've got to do this, you've got to do that", but a few times a situation would arise and he'd come up and make a suggestion.

In the first two-thirds of my career, The Oval was a slow, nothing wicket. You could hardly ever, as a spinner, get the ball to bounce over the top of the stumps. A nightmare. It was the slowest thing you could possibly bowl on. If it did turn, it hit people halfway up the front leg. Then they relaid all the surfaces and it went from one of the slowest, lowest pitches to this rock-hard thing that didn't get off the straight. We even had a stage with Intikhab [Alam] playing and he couldn't get it off the straight. Sometimes we played county games twice on the same pitch to try and get it to turn.

Greigy [Tony Greig] was the only player in the side who'd have done that [run out Alvin Kallicharran in Guyana]. Umpire Douglas Sang Hue had no option but to give him out. He hadn't called time and he hadn't picked the bails up. There were a few in the side that thought it was beyond the pale, but no one said it. Sobers told Greigy he should leave the ground in his car with him, otherwise he might not make it back to the hotel in one piece.

In Karachi, the students burned down the pavilion while we were still inside. The match and tour were called off.



"I I never got out as nightwatchman for England, and I'm quite proud about that" © Getty Images





Tom Graveney playing a T20 game would be like entering a Rolls-Royce in a stock car race.

I got 1607 wickets and John Emburey got 1608, both at 26 apiece, but he bowled 2000 more overs to get that wicket. His home ground was Lord's, which, in those days, was an infinitely better place to bowl spinners than The Oval. He was a fine bowler, but he was defensive and I was attacking, and on some wickets I felt I had the edge over him.

One year, Boycott had got 1300 runs in nine innings. We were playing Yorkshire at Bradford, and I had Graham Roope on Boycott's shoelaces on the off side, right on top of him. I ran up, bowled him off stump. As he walked past Roopey, he said, "I can't play that bowling, me." Roopey told me that, and I said, "Roopey, that ball did absolutely nothing. It didn't drift, didn't turn, he just played inside the line."

As soon as I'd played representative cricket for England Schools - I used to bat No. 5 - I thought I might have a chance.

Kenny [Barrington] was a selfish player, but anyone who played like he did was always going to be more consistent than someone like Ted Dexter. He used to restrict himself to three shots, and that's why he didn't get out, whereas Ted played every shot in the book. Kenny's going to be more consistent, but Dexter will win you more games.

Closey [Brian Close] got one run in 59 minutes [at Old Trafford in 1976] and had the shit knocked out of him. He was in a terrible state when he came in. I got in as nightwatchman in the second innings and I didn't get out that night. Next morning, I'm walking out with John Edrich and he asked me, "Which end do you fancy?" I told him I'd have Andy Roberts' end as he was a bit of light relief. John pisses himself laughing: "I tell you now, if Andy Roberts is light relief then we've got problems."

-----Further inputs from Pat Pocock when asked what he meant by the use of the wrist in spin bowling:

Firstly, my comment was in relation to left and right arm finger spinning, not wrist spinners as that is an entirely different technique.

When Monty Panasar was current, every pundit & journalist said “Monty has to bowl with more variation” – it was totally obvious. If we say for example that the majority of spinners vary their pace from, say 50 – 64 mph, this is not done with merely lobbing the balls up on the slower deliveries. A great exponent of what I was saying was Bishen Bedi. Bish could vary his pace with almost the same arm speed every ball. He did this by sometimes holding his wrist back and other times for pushing his wrist in hard behind the ball. Change of speed without any deception has little effect – it’s when a bowler makes the player arrive at his shot too early, or makes then jab the ball out when it’s a quicker ball, is what variation is all about. This is very important when trying to make the batsmen mis-read the length of the ball.

Bowlers need to get the basics of their action first, most importantly the smoothest rhythm they can manage – then, this gives them the ability to bowl the same ball time and time again, sometimes under pressure, and maintain control. Once they have learnt this………then they can experiment with their wrist…… in the nets?

Spin bowling is almost a forgotten art mainly because players and coaches have so much less experience in playing and teaching it!! When we don’t produce spin bowlers in County cricket the batsmen also suffer from opportunities to learn a technique against spin bowling. Some of our England batsmen in India will be on a vertical learning curve this winter I fear!!
-----

The poppy has become a symbol of racism – I have never worn one, and now I never will

Robert Fisk in The Independent


Yes, the boys and girls of the BBC and ITV, and all our lively media and sports personalities and politicians, are at it again. They’re flaunting their silly poppies once more to show their super-correctness in the face of history, as ignorant or forgetful as ever that their tired fashion accessory was inspired by a poem which urged the soldiers of the Great War of 1914-18 to go on killing and slaughtering.

But that’s no longer quite the point, for I fear there are now darker reasons why these TV chumps and their MP interviewees sport their red compassion badges on their clothes.

For who are they commemorating? The dead of Sarajevo? Of Srebrenica? Of Aleppo? Nope. The television bumpkins only shed their crocodile tears for the dead of First and Second World Wars, who were (save for a colonial war or two) the last generation of Brits to get the chop before the new age of “we-bomb-you-die” technology ensured that their chaps – brown-eyed, for the most part, often Muslims, usually dark skinned – got blown to bits while our chaps flew safely home to the mess for breakfast.

Yes, I rage against the poppy disgrace every year. And yes, my father – 12th Battalion The King’s Liverpool Regiment, Third Battle of the Somme, the liberation of burning Cambrai 1918 – finally abandoned the poppy charade when he learned of the hypocrisy and lies behind the war in which he fought. His schoolboy son followed his father’s example and never wore his wretched Flanders flower again.

Oddly, the dunderheads who are taking Britain out of the European Union on a carpet of equally deceitful lies – and I include Theresa May and her buffoonerie of ministers – are guilty of even greater hypocrisy than the TV presenters whose poppies, for just a few days a year, take over the function of studio make-up artists (poppies distracting viewers from the slabs of paste on their TV faces). For the fields of Flanders, the real mud and faeces and blood which those vile poppies are supposed to symbolise, showed just how European our dead generations were.
British soldiers went off to fight and die in their tens of thousands for little Catholic Belgium, today the seat of the EU where Nigel Farage disgraced his country by telling the grandchildren of those we went to fight for that they’d never done a day’s work in their lives. In France, British (and, of course, Irish) soldiers bled to death in even greater Golgothas – 20,000 alone on the first day of the Somme in 1916 – to save the nation which we are now throwing out of our shiny new insular lives.

The Entente Cordiale which sent my father to France is now trash beneath the high heels of Theresa May – yet this wretched woman dares to wear a poppy.

When Poles fought and died alongside British pilots in the 1940 Battle of Britain to save us from Nazi Germany, we idolised them, lionised them, wrote about their exploits in the RAF, filmed them, fell in love with them. For them, too, we pretend to wear the poppy. But now the poppy wearers want to throw the children of those brave men out of Britain. Shame is the only word I can find to describe our betrayal.

And perhaps I sniff something equally pernicious among the studio boys and girls. On Britain’s international television channels, Christmas was long ago banned (save for news stories on the Pope). There are no Christmas trees any more beside the presenters’ desks, not a sprig of holly. For we live in a multicultural society, in which such manifestations might be offensive to other “cultures” (I use that word advisedly, for culture to me means Beethoven and the poet Hafiz and Monet).

And for the same reason, our international screens never show the slightest clue of Eid festivities (save again for news stories) lest this, too, offend another “culture”. Yet the poppy just manages to sneak onto the screen of BBC World; it is permissable, you see, the very last symbol that “our” dead remain more precious than the millions of human beings we have killed, in the Middle East for example, for whom we wear no token of remembrance. Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara will be wearing his poppy this week – but not for those he liquidated in his grotesque invasion of Iraq.

And in this sense, I fear that the wearing of the poppy has become a symbol of racism. In his old-fashioned way (and he read a lot about post-imperial history) I think my father, who was 93 when he died, understood this.

His example was one of great courage. He fought for his country and then, unafraid, he threw his poppy away. Television celebrities do not have to fight for their country – yet they do not even have the guts to break this fake conformity and toss their sordid poppies in the office wastepaper bin.

In Brexit Britain, being a foreigner marks me out as evil

Joris Luyendijk in The Guardian

I realised it only after having done it. On Tuesday I was watching my kids playing with other children in a London park. I was about to call out to them when I intuitively caught myself. Having lived here for most of their life, my children speak flawless English. I, however, have a clear Dutch accent. Yelling to them would suddenly single them out as foreigners to the other children. Only six months ago none of this would have occurred to me. Now I find myself lowering my voice.

Something is rotting in England and the Brexit referendum result seems to have given the rot a boost of oxygen. The problem is not that a majority of English people or their government are racist or xenophobic; they are not. The problem is that those English people who are racist seem to think they have won the Brexit referendum and that now is open season. The government is doing precious little to counter this impression, while the powerful tabloids are feeding it, day in day out.

Yesterday’s Daily Mail splash was a new low. Featuring nine small photos of lorry drivers on their phones, the tabloid claims to have caught “17 foreign truckers using their phones at 50mph”. The key word here of course is “foreign”, establishing an unconscious link in people’s minds between “foreign” and evil. The Daily Mail has been at this for a long time, with my personal “favourite” its front page about “EU killers and rapists we’ve failed to deport”.

Recent research suggests that humans are predisposed to “learn” negative stereotypes. Our brains are more likely to remember negative information than positive information, especially about groups of whom we already hold negative views. Such a harmful cognitive feedback loop would call for extra caution when reporting, making sure ethnicity or religion is included only when relevant to the story. “Foreign lorry drivers using their phones while driving” does not pass that test, unless you believe English drivers never use their phones on the road.

LSE foreign academics told they will not be asked to advise UK on Brexit



“Foreigner”. When I came to live here five years ago that word felt so different from how it does today. Britain was the country that would give the governorship of the Bank of England to a Canadian – try to imagine Germany making a non-German head of the Bundesbank. London’s financial sector, where I had come to do research, was teeming with European immigrants telling me that it was in the City that for the first time ever they no longer felt like a foreigner. “It’s like they don’t see my skin colour,” a French-Algerian, Turkish-German or Surinamese-Dutch banker would say with genuine emotion. “It’s all about what you can do here, not how you look or where you are from.”

Fast forward a few years and a woman of Polish origin goes on BBC Question Time to say she no longer feels welcome in Britain. The audience boos her, proving her point better than she ever could. This is now a country where a minister calls for firms to publish lists with the “foreign” workers they employ, and where another government ministry tells the London School of Economics to no longer put forward any of its “foreign” academics for consultancy work on Brexit. Those two statements were rescinded, but the same is not true of another, made by a minister who described UK-based EU nationals such as me as among Britain’s most valuable bargaining chips in Brussels.

Meanwhile, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail seem to compete for the most outrageous incitement against migrants, refugees, “foreigners”. Indeed, in some quarters of England today, calling somebody “foreign” is enough to win the argument. The European court of justice? The European court of human rights? Well, they are staffed by foreign judges, so case closed.

Liam Fox: EU nationals in UK one of 'main cards' in Brexit negotiations



It is strange how these things get under your skin, when you realise that for millions of tabloid readers you are a “foreigner” rather than a fellow European. It suddenly feels significant that in the English language “foreigner” and “alien” are synonyms. When I have to fill out a form for the NHS, having to choose between “British white” and “Any other white” no longer looks so innocent; the same with schools having to report their pupils’ racial and ethnic backgrounds.

When I now see somebody reading the Daily Mail I can’t help thinking: why would you pay money to read invented horror stories about people like me? I am a supremely privileged middle-class Dutchman who can always return to his homeland – an even more prosperous place than England. But what must it be like for a 13-year-old UK-born girl of Kosovan descent growing up in Sunderland?

Usually a piece like this concludes with a sanctimonious warning of what history tells us xenophobic incitement ultimately leads to. But we are well past that. Jo Cox is dead. Hate crime figures have soared. Some people simply seem to have taken the Daily Mail at its word: our country is flooded by evil foreigners. The politicians are in cahoots with them. Who will speak for England?