Scarborough Fair – A Return to Reality

“Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Remember me to one who lives there,
For she once was a true love of mine”

To the cricket fan - and a Yorkshire one at that - Scarborough is not the setting of a Simon and Garfunkel song, or indeed a fading seaside resort, it is one of the remaining vespers of county cricket long forgotten. Yorkshire’s home is Headingly in Leeds, but since 1876 the North Marine Road Ground, a six-hit from the North Sea, has played host to a handful of Yorkshire matches each season. It has seen many great feats: a Bradman hundred, two one-day internationals, and Yorkshires first Championship victory for 33 years in 2001. In early September 2008 I visited Scarborough myself to see Yorkshire play Somerset in what was to be Darren Gough’s final game for his county.

I was in search of the atmosphere and the intricate pleasures of the game forgotten in a summer spent watching Sky Sports. I wanted to be as far away as possible from Premier Leagues and Stanford millions. I wanted to experience cricket as I had been reading about in the time-weathered articles penned by Cardus, Arlott, Kilburn and others.

Kilburn once wrote an entire article solely about Walter Hammonds walk to the wicket, saying of it “in no possible way could Royal progress have been more regal”. Viewing cricket on television obscures this sight as the break in play a wicket provides is deemed an appropriate time to push an advert down the viewer’s throats. Sir Viv Richards walk to the crease was one of the games great sights; masculine posturing to the extreme – and will be commented on until time immemorial. Modern television coverage would miss it.

Navigating the metal turnstiles as I enter the ground (no doubt the same ones my grandfather wandered through in the fifties) a smattering of spectators greet a four with gentle applause. I feel immediately comforted and at ease.

The Twenty20 game is great; it is fun, fast and entertaining, and exactly the injection of adrenaline the game needs to sustain itself. But, and this is crucial, it must not become the be-all of English cricket. There is a cricket far beyond the television: a game played in schools, clubs and back gardens across the country. Here is to be found the last vestiges of the cricket played for the last one hundred and fifty years - here retained and incubated in the safe confines of an East Yorkshire seaside town.

I take a seat on a wooden bench on the edge of the playing area. Former England captain Michael Vaughan stands in front of me - arms tea-cupped waiting for Tim Bresnan to bowl. This is a far cry from his televised departure from the England captaincy. These are not mediated images of him crying or snippets of interviews in which he bares his soul. There are no cameras to be seen; nobody is watching him but me.

In a break between overs he bends down towards a man sat a few paces to my right. He has a quiet word and emerges with a strawberry. Sky television may have multiple camera angles, ten commentators and High Definition television – but it leaves the viewer detached from the humanity which makes the game so compelling. Later, as Ian Blackwell sweeps a ball for four an audible “oh yer bastard” rings out as the ball beats him to the boundary.

On television you cannot appreciate a young Yorkshire bowler in Tim Bresnan running in for a crucial spell, flanked by over 400 Test Wickets worth of experience in Hoggard and Gough at mid-off and mid-on respectively. Watching them clapping encouragement and shouting sage advice: “pitch er up Brezza” was as intriguing as the game itself. Such intricacies are lost in the standard televised view of the bowler and batsman.

In India television and money hold such a grip over the game that reality is lost altogether. After every over a television advert is sent into the living rooms of millions. Late this winter Monty Panesar may have given Tendulkar hell for six balls - making him play and miss out of the rough. The very next ball (or so it will seem) the same batsman seen struggling will be watched driving a bowler for an immaculate four in a Pepsi or Coke commercial. The tension dissipates and the collective intake of breath that took 4 or 5 over’s to develop is let out.

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan argued in the 1960s: “the medium is the message” – the symbiotic relationship between art and technology means the medium through which art is consumed influences its meaning. The relationship between sport and technology is no different. Cricket through television has changed indelibly to become evermore influenced by the medium through which it is consumed. Packer, Sky and Stanford are evidence enough.

“Remember me to one who lives there” sang Simon and Garfunkel. Television has changed the game so much for the better that it would be a tragedy if it destroyed what makes the game so compelling: a young bowler being helped by his elders, a former captain at ease with himself and the collective tension created by a session of rugged ebb and flow. The spectators and the game are one; they interrelate and play off each other. The cricket is not remote in the middle, viewed through the kaleidoscope of images vetted by editors and cameramen.

Hopefully the county championship, a thrilling one this year as last, will survive, as will the intimate out-grounds like Scarborough. If they do not then what makes cricket such a wonderfully absorbing game may be forgotten and reality may be lost to the game forever.

Rashid’s Non-Selection Was The Right One

Alongside Essex’s ever maturing Ravi Bopara there was one notable absentee from England’s pre-Christmas touring party to India: Yorkshire’s leg-spinning all-rounder Adil Rashid. Despite the consternation's I’ve heard since from some Yorkshire supporters, the decision was made in the best interests of both England and Yorkshire, and more importantly the player himself.

The debates surrounding the merits of picking this spin prodigy for the national team will not be alien to the supporters who have regularly watched him over the course of the last two summers:

• 62 First Class Wickets in 2008 at 31 runs apiece
• Fourth highest wicket taker in 2008
• No other bowler took more than his 4 five wicket hauls this season
• A higher strike-rate than any other spin-bowler in England, with wickets coming every 59 balls
• In 2007 he scored almost 800 runs at an average of 46
• A relegation-saving century and 9 wickets in the final game of 2008
  

Have the selectors then made a great blunder in not picking him? These figures are compelling, especially when you consider that his competition for an England place alongside Monty Panesar was a piebald group of ageing county pro’s, nearly-men, journeymen and promising youngsters.

Others players discussed included the 33-year-old Gary Keedy averaging 41 with Lancashire and Samit Patel with only 12 first class wickets all season. Rashid’s figures surpass both these candidates – along with the eventually chosen Graham Swann who managed only 32 wickets this season (almost half Rashid’s eventual total). So why was he not picked? And more importantly, why was this a good decision?

Warne – I will hear some cry – was thrown straight into the Australian Test team. Why not do the same with Rashid and see what happens? I agree that faith is needed in young players. Warne, however, was a once in a lifetime cricketer. Look at those spinners thrust into the limelight too early: Chris Schofield and Yorkshire’s own Richard Dawson – both had faults found in their game, both suffered from lack of confidence as a result and both slipped out of the county game in their mid-twenties. Young spinners – especially leg-spinners – need watchful man-management.

India is also a difficult place to tour. Warne himself struggled with conditions that seemed felicitous for him, averaging 43 in his 9 matches in India. Facing Tendulkar, Dhoni and Sehwag on flat, if dusty, pitches would be a stern test for anyone, let alone a bowler in his first series.

Australia play a four-test series before England’s arrival and look set to hand a debut to the young off-spinner Jason Krejza. In a recent match against an Indian Board XI he bowled 31 wicketless overs for 199 runs. That is to say, very few spin-bowlers are ready to deal with the rigours required of them by an Indian tour – let-alone a young man still learning his trade.

While Rashid has enjoyed his most bountiful season to date, his form has varied markedly throughout the summer. In 2007 he was disappointing, averaging over 40 runs per wicket. This season he improved, but it was largely down to a late-season surge that he moved so highly up the wicket taking tables. With a recently remodeled action following a serious back injury he needs more time to define his difficult talent. Leg-spin is an art, but it does not come solely from talent and flair. Like any artist with a paintbrush or a composer with a piano, the leg-spin bowler needs hours of practice to control and temper his Dionysian qualities on a cricket field.

Ajantha Mendis, Sri Lanka’s new spin bowling dervish, is perhaps an unfair comparison in that he possesses a wholly remarkable delivery of the ball with a flick from his middle finger। However, despite his prodigious talent, he did not receive international recognition until he was 23 – and that is with a first class average of 15. Similarly Monty Panesar did not play until he was almost 24 – following several seasons of cricket with Northants in which he was taunted as being England potential. Rashid is still just 20.

It is worth repeating the mantra again and again: spin bowlers need time to develop, or you risk them having their confidence dented. The glare of innumerable television-camera’s at international matches mean problems are magnified by the swath of ex-professionals turned commentators, and not treated in the nets. Let us be right – Rashid is good enough to one-day play for England. But he is also young enough to be given a few more years of county training before his eventual selection. This will not just benefit Yorkshire, but also the England team for years to come.