eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781877551727 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Awa Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2006 |
| Series: | The Ginger series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 144 |
| File size: | 840 KB |
About the Author
Harry Ricketts is a published poet, an editor for BBC Press, and the author of Rudyard Kipling: A Life.
Read an Excerpt
How to Catch a Cricket Match
By Harry Ricketts
Awa Press
Copyright © 2006 Harry RickettsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-877551-72-7
CHAPTER 1
Cricket: A sport at which contenders drive a ball with sticks or bats in opposition to each other.
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language
Before the start of play
IT'S JUNE 1955. My father and I are playing cricket on our pocket handkerchief of a lawn. Our house is in a barracks just outside Worcester, and the lawn is surrounded by laurel bushes, with spikes on top of the walls behind. My father, an English army officer, is a quiet man with a salt-and-pepper moustache, rather shy. 'Good shot,' he says. 'Keep your eye on the ball. Hard lines.' When it's my turn to bowl, I run round and round the garden, whirling my arms and shouting, 'I'm Typhoon Tyson!' until I get giddy and fall over giggling.
August 1961. My father and I sit transfixed on blue-backed chairs in the study. On the black-and-white screen, England are 150 for 1 and need only another 100 more runs to win the Test against Australia and regain the Ashes. Ted Dexter is on 76, a thrilling innings. The Australian captain, Richie Benaud, is bowling round the wicket, pitching his leg-spinners in the rough outside the batsman's leg-stump.
Suddenly Dexter flashes at a ball and is caught by the wicket-keeper. A pity he's out, but no matter because in comes Peter May, the England captain and one of the best batsmen in the world. He looks relaxed, in control. Second ball, Benaud bowls him behind his legs for 0, playing a sweep shot without covering his wicket with the left pad – an elementary mistake.
The next batsman is Brian Close, a left-hander. Within minutes he too has committed cricketing suicide, sweeping. My father and I sit on in the blue-backed chairs, distraught, disbelieving, as almost-victory slides inexorably to defeat.
August 1976. The scorching English summer of Dutch elm disease. I am on holiday from my job in Hong Kong and staying with my friend David in Elvington, just outside York. David has secured us a game for the Elvington Second XI. The game – against the staff of a supermarket chain – takes place on the edge of a park. The pitch is an ordinary strip of mown grass, with the creases at each end marked out in white. It is a minefield, lethal. The ball either shoots along the ground or knocks your head off.
We make 48. David easily top-scores with 19. A shooter does for me, lbw 1. When their last man comes in, they are 48 for 9. One run to win, one wicket to tie. I've bowled throughout the innings, taken four wickets and sent another batsman to hospital – not intentionally: the ball simply reared up off a length and broke his glasses. The tension is palpable. What to bowl? Two short ones, I decide, followed by a yorker. The batsman leaves the first two balls, aims to swipe the third and win the game. The ball nips underneath the bat, hits leg-stump. The game is a tie.
January 1984, Wellington. From the garden comes the regular thud, thud of a tennis ball being thrown against a wall and hit back. My stepson Max is practising his batting. He's a left-hander, so he stands, side-on to the wall, bat in right hand, ball in left. I can picture the scene: his intense concentration as he throws the ball, then quickly grips the bat with both hands and lunges forward as the ball bounces back at him. He's not a natural sportsman, but by assiduous practice and great effort of will he has made himself a reasonable batsman. His knowledge of contemporary cricketers, both from New Zealand and overseas, is already encyclopaedic. How many did Martin Crowe score on his Test debut? (9 run out.) Who passed Freddie Trueman's record of 307 Test wickets? (The West Indian off-spinner Lance Gibbs.) It's a great bond between us. We often play down in Kelburn Park or on our scrap of lawn, just as my father played with me. Max also practises on his own for hours. Thud, thud.
It's now January 1990. My team – the one I've played for since 1982 – has a match at Tawa. We have only nine players. This is not good, nor is the fact we've scored only 80-something runs. I've brought my daughter Jessie (nine) and my second son Jamie (seven) with a picnic to watch the match. They both know how to play from Saturday 'Kiwi cricket' and games at home. We've batted hopelessly, but Tawa aren't strong and we still have a chance.
I ask the kids tentatively whether they'd like to field for us to make up numbers. They seem keen. I ask the Tawa captain if he minds. He doesn't. I tell the kids just to try and stop the ball if it comes near them, but on no account to try and catch it. I position Jessie at long-stop both ends, directly behind our wicket-keeper, a young journalist called John Campbell, and Jamie, who is more cricket-savvy, directly behind the bowler. Both make invaluable stops, and thanks to our left-arm spinner, Bede Corry, we win by half a dozen runs.
January 2001. My team (still the same one – at fifty, I'm now the oldest member) is playing a game at Grenada North. Also in the team are Jamie, now eighteen, and another stepson, Tom. In itself it's not a particularly memorable game, but Jamie nonchalantly takes a high catch off Tom's bowling. The ball seems to hang in the air forever before coming down. Someone takes a photo of the three of us, in front of slopes of gorse, our eyes screwed up against the sun.
I sometimes ask myself what it is about cricket that has kept me playing and watching it with undiminished passion for half a century. And when I do, I blame my father. It was he who taught me the absolute basics of the game on that tiny lawn when I was five. 'Showed' is probably a better word. Cricket, as he showed it, went more or less like this. The person holding the bat was called the batsman, and stood in front of three sticks in the ground (the wicket) with two smaller sticks across the top (the bails). The person with the ball – usually my father – was called the bowler, and lobbed the ball at the wicket, trying to hit it. As the batsman, my job was to try to prevent the ball hitting the wicket, and, if possible, to whack it as far as I could.
It looked easy, but it wasn't. The ball, usually a tennis ball, would come towards me, fairly slowly. I would watch it all the way. It would bounce. I would swing the bat and often, somehow, miss. If the ball hit the wicket, my father would usually give me another go. He was infinitely patient.
That duel between bowler and batsman is the essence of cricket. The bowler is trying to hit the wicket. The batsman is trying to prevent this, and to hit the ball as far as possible. Everything else in cricket is merely an amplification of this essential encounter.
The first amplification is that in a real game of cricket – a match – there are eleven players on each side, plus two umpires. Each team takes it in turn to bat and bowl. The object is for one team to score more runs than the other. The object of the team that is fielding is to dismiss, or 'get out', ten of the batsmen on the opposing team.
All eleven of the bowling side are on the field at once, but only two batsmen; their team-mates sit on the sidelines.
In the middle of the field stand two wickets, 22 yards (20 metres) apart, with white-painted lines to show where the batsmen should stand – the 'batting crease' – and from behind which the bowler should bowl – 'the bowling crease'. One batsman faces the bowler; the other stands at the bowler's end, ready to run if required.
The section of the playing area to the right of the batsman who is facing the bowler is called the off-side; the section to the left (because it is the side where the batsman's legs are) is called the leg-side or on-side (see figure 1). Complementing this division of the cricket field into offside and leg-side, the three stumps that comprise the wicket are referred to as the off-stump, middle-stump and leg-stump.
The second amplification is that there are ten ways in which the batsman can be got out. Five of these are common and happen in most matches. The most comprehensive, and often dramatic, is when the batsman is bowled: that is, the bowler delivers the ball, the batsman misses, and the ball breaks the wicket, causing one or both bails to fall off. Fast bowlers, in particular, love making the bails fly and the stumps leap out of the ground.
But the batsman can also be caught: the ball hits bat or glove and is then caught by a fielder before touching the ground. Or run out: while the batsman is attempting a run, a fielder throws the ball at the wicket to which the batsman's heading and breaks it, or a fielder with the ball in hand breaks the wicket. Or stumped: the fielder stationed close behind the wicket in gloves and pads – the wicket-keeper – takes the ball and breaks the wicket, the batsman having strayed out of the crease. Or lbw (leg before wicket): any part of the batsman or batsman's equipment is hit by the ball, which the umpire feels would have otherwise hit the wicket – although this form of dismissal is also a bit more complicated than this simple description would indicate, and the cause of frequent dismay and controversy (see figure 2).
The five less common ways of being dismissed really are uncommon. I've been out 'hit wicket' – that is, the batsman has broken his own wicket while playing a shot – but only once.
I've never been out, or played in a game in which anyone was out, for hitting the ball twice: that is, after hitting the ball, the batsman tries to hit it again for purposes other than defending their wicket.
Nor have I played in a match in which someone was out for obstructing the field: that is, the batsman deliberately prevented a fielder from, say, catching the ball. Nor for handled ball – when the batsman touched the ball with a hand not holding the bat – although two English batsmen, Len Hutton and Graham Gooch, have been given out in Test matches in this fashion.
Nor have I seen anyone being timed out – that is, when the incoming batsman deliberately took more than two minutes to get to the crease.
At school, my fellow cricketers and I would some times fantasise about these more bizarre ways of being out, and even wilfully introduce them into our knock-up games.
Ball pitches
1 OUT The ball pitched outside the off-stump but hit the pad on the line of the stumps and would have hit the wicket.
2 & 3 OUT Pitched on and would have hit.
4 NOT OUT/OUT Ball pitched outside the line and hit the pad, also outside the line; but would have hit the wicket. NOT OUT if the striker made a genuine attempt to play the ball; OUT if he did not.
5 NOT OUT The ball pitched outside the line of the leg-stump.
The third thing to grasp about cricket is that batsmen are not simply trying to stop themselves being out in any of these ten ways: they are also trying to score runs. A run is scored whenever a batsman facing a bowler hits the ball and the two batsmen successfully change ends without one of them being caught or run out. If they do this twice off the same ball, it counts as two runs and so on. If the batsman hits the ball on the ground across the boundary line, this is worth four runs and no actual running is required. A ball hit over the boundary line without touching the ground first is worth six runs.
Each run scored is accredited both to the team and to the batsman who scored it. But here's the confusing bit: the batsmen may also run if the ball ricochets off any part of the batsman's body (this is called a leg-bye), or is missed by the batsman but also by the wicket-keeper (a bye). Both leg-byes and byes are called extras, or sundries, and are accredited only to the team's score in the score book.
Cricket scorebooks or scorecards all follow the same basic format: the batsman's name, the mode of dismissal, the bowler's name, the batsman's total. Some even include a ball-by-ball breakdown of each batsman's innings – such as 'dot, 4, dot, bowled', or 'nothing scored, 4 scored, nothing scored, batsman out'.
Each batsman who bats has his or her own innings, or individual score: 4, say, or 60 not out. The team also has an innings, which is the combination of its batsmen's innings plus any extras. As an example, 250 all out means the team scored 250 runs and lost all ten of their available wickets; 250 for 7 means the team scored 250 runs but lost only seven of their ten wickets. Some matches involve one innings per side, some two.
Each bowler ordinarily delivers six balls to the same batsman – or to him and his partner, if they have changed ends due to an odd number of runs being scored. This is called an over. A right-handed bowler will normally bowl from the left side of the stumps and a left-handed bowler from the right. The ball must be delivered with a straight arm, or at least an elbow that does not bend more than 15 degrees. If the ball is not delivered with a straight (ish) arm, it is considered a throw, and the umpire calls 'no ball', giving the batsman, in effect, a free hit: the only way he can be out is if he is run out. He can't, for example, be out bowled or caught.
If the bowler's leading foot is in front of the foremost white line when the ball is released, the umpire also calls 'no ball', and an extra ball must be bowled. Some overs can, therefore, be ten or twelve balls long. Similarly, if a bowler bowls a ball beyond the batsman's normal reach, the umpire will call 'wide'.
For all dismissals except bowled and an obvious catch, the bowler and/or fielders must 'appeal' to the umpire. The appeal conventionally takes the form of 'howzat?' or, more plummily, 'how's that'.
Umpires use various fascinating signals to reinforce their decisions. If an umpire gives a batsman out, he raises his forefinger. If he has called a wide, he stretches out both arms to either side. For a no ball, he stretches out a single arm. A leg-bye is shown by tapping the leg, a bye by raising one arm above the head. A boundary four is indicated by sweeping one arm from side to side, a six by raising both hands above the head. Manyumpires are known for their distinctive way of making these signals. When giving a batsman out, the New Zealand umpire Billy Bowden always raises a crooked finger, like a question mark.
At the end of each over, a bowler from the other end bowls to whichever batsman is now facing him.
If, in an over, a batsman fails to score any runs off the six balls, the over is called a maiden. Cricket is full of wonderfully strange names and terms like this: maiden over, gully, nightwatchman, yorker, googly and many others. (If in doubt, see the glossary.)
That's where poetry comes in. Fleming cuts Edwards to gully: as succinct as a haiku to a cricket follower; as impenetrable as the Enigma code to everyone else. Fleming cuts Edwards to gully: spelt out, it means the batsman, Fleming, plays a cut stroke to a ball delivered by the bowler, Edwards. A cut stroke is one in which a ball bouncing up outside the off-stump is hit with a horizontal bat to a fielder close in on the off-side, behind the batsman's wicket and between slip and point. But then you have to explain two other fielding positions, slip and point (see figure 3). A number of cricketing terms hark back to the eighteenth century, but gully is more recent, dating from only the early twentieth. It derives its name from the usual meaning of 'gully', implying the existence of a metaphorical channel between point and slip, towards the boundary behind the batsman.
These are the most general fielding positions. They assume that the batsman is right-handed, and that the bowler is delivering right-arm over the wicket.
Close catchers
1 Wicket-keeper
2 First slip
3 Second slip
4 Third slip
5 Short slip
6 Gully
7 Backward point
8 Point
9 Silly mid-off
10 Silly mid-on
11 Forward short-leg
12 Short-leg
13 Backward short-leg
Midfield
14 Cover point
15 Extra cover
16 Mid-off
17 Mid-on
18 Mid-wicket
19 Square-leg
Outfield
20 Third man
21 Deep extra cover
22 Long-off
23 Long-on
24 Deep square-leg
25 Long-leg
One of my favourite fielding positions is called silly mid-on. This refers to a fielder on the on- or leg-side of the pitch about 5 yards (4.5 metres) or so in front of the batsman. Mid-on – also a fielding position in its own right – is short for an older term, middle wicket on. The silly suggests the inherent silliness of standing so near the batsman, in danger of being hit when he strikes the ball. The position (and its name) date from at least 1878, when it was much used by an Australian team touring England. A century later, English singer-songwriter Roy Harper brought the term evocatively into the last song on his album HQ:
When an old cricketer leaves the crease
Well you never know whether he's gone
If sometimes you're catching a fleeting glimpse
Of a twelfth man at silly mid-on.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How to Catch a Cricket Match by Harry Ricketts. Copyright © 2006 Harry Ricketts. Excerpted by permission of Awa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.