This Weather Is Just Not Cricket (1 July 1978)

Cold, dark, windy – and its July

I am writing on a cold, dark, wet, windy day in the first week of July.  The fire is on and very soon the light will have to be on too.  Earlier this year I wrote about the old belief that if the weather was good on St. Paul’s Day (January 25) then a prosperous summer would follow.  Well, the weather on St. Paul’s Day this year could not have been better and so far – which is now pretty far – there has been no summer at all, except for a day or two sometime in May.

In another article I said that usually the weather was at least passable for Wimbledon.  Well, we are now in the second week of Wimbledon and the hours of play have had to be extended to make up for lost time.  The “Nasty!” man is out, but the nasty weather continues unabated.

Sunshine.

You youngsters should remember this year.  Otherwise you will fall into the same error as your fathers and mothers and your grandfathers and grandmothers.  They will tell you how in their own young day’s summers were all sunshine and strawberries and cream.  In fact, they were not.  Ever since reliable records began to be kept in the 1890’s there have been a few bad summers, many moderate summers, and just a few summers that were all summer, like 1976 and to a lesser extent 1975.  One of the earliest records is of snow still lying on Dartmoor on Midsummer’s Day.

The year 1947 must also have been pretty miserable, seeing that the versifying Vicar of Leighton Buzzard, Canon S. J. Forrest, wrote in the November issue of his parish magazine:

Torrential November

(Oh, may it end soon)

Helps us to remember

Our juiciest June.

As noses grow numb-er

And feet chilly wet

The last blows of summer

Remain with us yet.

Nor is it just this country that has been affected this year.  On days when the London temperature has not reached 60 degrees F, temperatures in some capitals across the Channel have been just as low, and sometimes lower.  Remember that also.  Remember likewise that on one day this year Manchester was the hottest place in the whole of Europe.

I am sorry about Wimbledon. The ladies, aged eight to 80, all love it – as much for the surroundings as for the play.  Usually the place has a happy atmosphere and what you see is still lawn tennis, not clay, or gravel, or tarmac tennis.  I myself, for 50 years a tennis rabbit, used to enjoy going there as well, if only to see how the game should be played.

But despite my fondness for tennis, I was even sorrier when the England v Pakistan test match at Headingley drizzled out to a dismal draw.  For cricket, which is beloved by the ladies only when they can picnic somewhere safely out of reach of the ball, is the greatest game of all – soccer and its mania coming well down the list.

I suppose this opinion comes partly from hearing and understanding such expressions as sticky wicket, square cut, long hop and maiden over for as long as I can remember anything.  But only partly.  It is the aspects of the game itself that appeal.  In tennis and similar games, it is one against one, or two against two.  And in soccer and rugby it is 11 against 11 or 13 against 13, or 15 against 15, except for the odd moment of soccer penalty kicks.  Soccer, especially at top level, does no credit to sport at all.  We see players feigning injury.  We see them claiming a throw-in or a corner, or any other advantage when they must know quite well that that is not their due.  And in one of the World Cup games there were over 50 free kicks for fouls and other misdemeanours.  To my mind that condemns for itself.

Substance

On the other hand, when a batsman takes his stand, he knows he is not playing just the bowler but all the other ten opponents as well and that they will do all in their power to get him out.  They will appeal, of course, but mostly only if they think there is substance for it. If he is not a tail-ender he expects a few legitimate bumpers from the fast men.  And he is confident that if his bat has touched the ball, no fielder will claim a catch knowing it has not been made – witness Brearley’s no-claim for a catch in the Pakistan test when only he could have known whether it was one or not.  If an umpire gives him out and he thinks the umpire is mistaken, he might seem to be reluctant to go, but he does not argue and he does go.

And if he survives all the hazards and makes a good score, his opponents will clap their appreciation along with the crowd.  Yet there are times when a very low score made in a very long time can be just as valuable to his side as a century made at other times and to those who know real cricket (as distinct from limited-over knockabouts) there is no greater drama and no greater example of an immovable object meeting an irresistible force as when a first-rate batsman meets a first-rate slow bowler.

Enthusiasm

It is pleasing to see how this peculiarly English game has been taken up with such enthusiasm by the former empire at large.

But what particularly pleases me is that the length of the pitch has remained the same ever since the rules of the game were first co-ordinated in 1744.  I suppose that the chaps of those days (and here I hand it to the southerners) or even earlier found the old agricultural chain of 22 yards as good a length as any and readily at hand.  Fortunately, it is a length that defies easy metrication, or by this time we would have had it pontificated by a bunch of Europeans who don’t know a cricket ball from a coconut and would not care so long as it could be measured in tenths of something else equally useless.  For be it known that the chain is still the measure for hedging and ditching, and long may its use for both work and play continue.