What is a 'good' pitch?

“How are the first team getting on?”, “They scored 320-4 off their 50 overs”, “Must have been a good wicket!”. It’s a conversation heard on many a cricket ground during the season. Yet is it really a good wicket? Surely what you actually mean is “that must have a been a good wicket to bat on!”

We all know that cricket is a batsmans game. I regularly have this conversation with my dad, pleading how unfair it is, and he regularly reminds me that people come to watch batsmen and not bowlers. Yet surely what matters as a spectator is the game being close rather than lots of runs being scored on a pitch as flat as a pancake.

Finding the right balance is always the challenge. As a bowler, while it is nice when the pitch offers you a lot of assistance, you also acknowledge that it is not fun watching one team get 70 all out while the other team struggle to chase it. What you really want is a wicket which rewards a bowler when they keep the ball in the right areas consistently enough. You just want it to do ‘a little bit’ so if you bowl well then the batsman is kept under pressure.

Getting this balance is crucial to keeping the equality in the battle between bowler and batsmen. After all, surely winning sports matches is about who has the best team, not just who has the most aggressive batsmen on a flat deck.

At Kimberley, we are renowned for producing ‘good wickets’. It is probably fair to say that generally conditions at Kimberley favour the batsman with the size of the boundaries and the fact the ball comes nicely on to the bat. However, it is very rare that as a bowler you don’t feel that you have something in it for you. As long as you maintain that status quo, it generally makes for good cricket matches.

Just because a wicket is easy to bat on, is it a good wicket?

There is no doubt that over time, cricket has definitely moved in the direction of helping batsmen. Whether it be big steps such as the advent of covered wickets, or the improved condition of bats, to smaller but still significant factors such as the two new white balls in ODI’s removing the bowlers ability to reverse swing the ball, and keeping the ball hard for 50 overs. In addition, umpires will abscond any bowler who slightly incurs on the pitch during follow through, yet a batsman is allowed to disturb the surface as much as he or she likes with their ‘gardening’.

Despite this, it is pleasing to see during the last week two excellent bowling performances for England putting them into this weekends Champions Trophy Final. Yet, many would complain that this was not down to them but actually a poor pitch with seamed and spun a little too much, the weather which helped the ball swing, and the South African bastmen who choked. Or maybe, just maybe, the bowlers bowled well…

Is it still possible to be a 'One Club Man'?

With football dominant in the British media, June and July always prove to be challenging months for the national broadcast and print journalists as they have to actually look beyond ‘our national game’ for stories to fill their papers. Yet despite this, it is still difficult for cricket or any other sport to knock a football story off the back page, even when an Aussie opening batsman is throwing out punches in Birmingham bars.

June and July are very much the month of the big summer transfer, and whether it be Gareth Bale, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney or Jose Mourinho, the papers are full of speculation of who is moving and where they are going to. For football, the summer transfer has long been the norm, as players look for pastures new and managers and coaches try to bolster squads.

Growing up in Lancashire and playing in the Northern Cricket League, transfers between clubs were very rare. You very much played for your local club, and once you had done so, you didn’t play anywhere else. Of course there were people who moved in and out of the area, so teams were renewed, and the odd person did move between clubs, but it was quite controversial when people did.

Having lived and played in the East Midlands now for nine years, I have been amazed at how easily people move between clubs within the same league, particularly in Nottinghamshire. This is no doubt partly down to the geographical tight nature of the league (the Northern League was stretched over a much larger distance and so swapping clubs was always harder), but as Jon Terry said to me during the week, it is almost as though the era of the ‘one club man’ is over.

I was very lucky to have been brought up playing cricket at Lancaster. A club steeped in history, it was great to come through the ranks from 4^th team to the 1^st team, and during that process, play alongside many senior players who previously been first team stalwarts. I can still remember playing in the fourth team with former first team legend Rodney Webb at Ripley St Thomas School at the age of 12, then with my dad in the second team before making the breakthrough into the first team. The role of the senior players in the club was not only to play at the highest standard for themselves, but also to put something back into the club when it was time for them to move aside. They did this by taking on roles as senior players in the second and third teams, adding that competitive drive, but also the experience and advice that young players could learn from.


In my early days I played for Lancaster 4th XI at Ripley St Thomas School



In recent weeks we have seen a number of mid-season transfers within the league, as players try to better the standard of cricket that they are playing. I would never begrudge anyone wanting to play at the highest standard they can. However, it is important that players remember their roots, and when the time comes, return to take on that development role that is so crucial in bringing through the next generation. I for one, would be more than happy to be back playing at Ripley St Thomas or Basil Russell one day, knowing I have had a hand in developing a future Premier League star.

It's just not cricket. Is it?

Saturday was obviously a hugely disappointing result for us coming off the back of a run of such positive matches. While I don’t think we rested on our laurels, Welbeck were certainly very fired up and perhaps wanted it more than we did. They outplayed us in the first ten overs of each innings, firstly through Jake Ball’s bowling and then Martin Dobson with the bat, and they were well worth their win at the end of the day.

When your up against it in a game like that, you have to look for any positives you can take out of the match, and when we removed Martin Dobson with the score on 90, we thought we might just be able to sneak a point. Our hopes were raised further when the new batsman knocked the cover off the ball when trying to tickle it down the leg side, and Sam Ogrizovic took the catch. To the fielders disbelief the umpire said no, and we were unable to make another breakthrough.

I have no issue with the umpire giving the ball not out, after all, he can only give what he sees and hears. However, as a batsman, should you walk when you know you have hit, as this lad did? It is an age-old question of sportsmanship that goes right back in time. Some people are ‘walkers’ others are not. Some ‘walk’ when its obvious but hang about when it is subtle.

Cricket is often held up as a game of morals in which players, play in the famous ‘spirit of the game’. Indeed, the Lords Taverners and the MCC pride themselves on taking this spirit of the game message around the world as a model for sporting behaviour. Yet when we look closely, how much of cricket now really encompasses sporting behaviour?

Let us look first at a couple of examples. The recent ODI that I watched on TV at Southampton had two incidents where the third umpire was needed to decided on whether a fielder had touched the rope. On both occasions the fielder was adamant that they hadn’t, and the TV footage was at best inconclusive. Yet the decision, was four runs on both occasions, challenging the fielders honesty. This has been seen too witch catches in the field being disallowed as the TV footage makes it look like the ball bounced, when we all know that sometimes it just lands on the fingers.

 

Is the third umpire to blame for damaging the spirit of cricket?

This challenging culture now permeates everything within our game at the top level. Yes we want to make sure the decision is correct, but does it set the right example to those playing at a grass roots level. When I grew up it was very rare for players to challenge other players on the validity of a dismissal or a piece of fielding. It was accepted that people were honest. Of course, on occasions some were not, but it was deemed that the weight of that on their conscience would be punishment enough. Nowadays it is quite common to see a batsman stand his ground, or for players to ‘try and get away with it’ due to the win at all costs culture that we have created.

I am not saying that this is wrong, or that I have not been party to such behaviour (anyone who has seen me on a coaching hockey on the touchline will know I look for every advantage possible!). I do however think it is time for the MCC to stop patronising people about the Spirit of Cricket, as at the moment, I struggle to understand what that really means.

I leave you with this… If you get a little snick on Saturday, will you walk or wait for the umpire to make a decision? I won’t judge you.

Heads of Tails?

As I was away last week I asked our scorer Rob Naylor to write on my behalf. Here is his article on the toss...

Greetings from the Scorebox.

As Gloves is away this week he has asked me to step in and offer my thoughts and I suppose an introduction is needed: I’m Rob Naylor and on a Saturday I score for KICC’s 1^st XI.

The Bank Holiday weekend was a good one for the Club as three of our four teams recorded positive results on Saturday. It certainly proved a particularly fruitful one for the 1^st XI as they picked up 36pts from a possible 40; a hard fought winning draw away at Farnsfield was followed up on Monday by a fairly comfortable 109 run victory over Papplewick & Linby at home and, after a quarter of the season, we find ourselves 5^th in the NPL table.

Anyway on with my choice of subject: The Toss. Now of course winning the toss doesn’t always guarantee success and it can lead to some poor calls; just ask Nasser Hussain or Ricky Ponting about their decisions at Brisbane in 2002 or Edgbaston in 2005. Even with that in mind it has long puzzled me why such an arbitrary method - that bears no relation to a team’s ability - is used to decide who gets to bat or bowl first in a cricket match; a wrong call by the Captain and a side finds themselves put in on a damp pitch or bowling first on a flat deck that offers nothing and having to watch the opposition pile up the runs and then face scoreboard pressure when they eventually get to bat.

For instance on Saturday Sam won the toss and opted to bat first on a good track and, thanks to an excellent opening stand of 145 from Paldip Sidhu and Jon Terry (both making 75) and a blitz at the death from James Mann (43*), he was able to watch the team post an impressive 259-5 and know that the pressure would be on Farnsfield to score at a tad over five-an-over to have a chance of winning the game. Arguably there is plenty of pressure in setting a good score, but the pressure of chasing certainly took its toll on several members of the Farnsfield middle-order as they got themselves out trying to force the run-rate against the slow bowlers.

So, how could the toss become less of an arbitrary affair? Well – get rid of it! The late, great cricket writer and commentator Christopher Martin-Jenkins in his 2007 MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture talked about a bidding system and this has always interested me; the idea that, for instance, upon arriving to find a damp pitch and dull overhead conditions the two captains would propose how many runs they would wish to concede in order to bowl first on such a wicket. One captain says 30, the other 35 and with the winning bid he would then have the choice of batting or bowling. Of course such ‘bidding’ would have to take place in secret, perhaps placed in sealed envelopes, and be submitted to the umpires who then reveal what each captain has bid and go from there.

Without the time or space to go into greater detail I fully accept that there are of course many pros and cons to such a system, but I think that it could be made to work and it would certainly make decision making at the start a much more thoughtful and intriguing affair with captains, coaches et al having to get a good read on the pitch and conditions. There’s no doubt that many already try to do this, but come Saturday the question of batting or bowling will still rely on choosing a head or tail.

Finding the Pressure Points

This weekend saw one of the most dramatic finishes to a cricket game I have experienced in quite a while. I suppose the real drama of it was mainly created by the speed at which Clifton capitulated from a seemingly unassailable position. My last memory of such a turnaround was when I played at Loughborough University in BUSA Final. There, it was Durham University who were cruising towards our modest total when suddenly they embarked on a self-destruction mission. We always joked that they had their victory cigars on a half price sale the next day. Yet how can teams lose matches from such a comfortable position?

Cricket is such an unusual sport. I can’t think of many others like it other than perhaps Baseball or Rounders, which combine the adversarial individual battle of ‘me against you’ within a team context. Yes you are playing within a team, and you are reliant on your teammates to support you when fielding and batting (making sure they don’t run you out!), but ultimately it is a contest between batsman and bowler. Others would also argue that is as much a battle with yourself as it is with your opponent, stating the famous adage that ‘cricket is 90% in the mind and 10% in ability’.

The fielding team can put a batsman under pressure

Does this explain though how we can get such dramatic swings? Well a huge part of playing any sport is the ability to perform under pressure. This is an area which is traditionally associated with the field of sports psychology but it is just as much about training methods as a whole. The reason we practice the repetition of skills is so that when we need to draw on that particular aspect of our game, it becomes tacit, and stands up to the scrutiny of competition. Much of training is geared around repetition, but as players and coaches, how much of that repetition is high quality? Do we spend enough time repeating the skills that should be core to us? Only when we do this can we expect to perform well under the scrutiny of pressure.

Yet what creates a pressure situation? Surely Clifton on Saturday at 117-2 needing 148 to win would have felt little pressure with the target so close and men left in the shed. What they probably started to do, was concentrate on the scoreboard and less on the execution of batting well. We suffered the same fate last week at Sandiacre. With an ugly pitch, rain in the air, and a high quality attack, as batsmen we were probably worrying less on ‘batting’ and more on the excuses we might have for getting out. As wickets then started to tumble, the bowling side can make you feel like you are doing worse than you probably are. It is only the most mentally robust batsmen who can shut out those external factors, and concentrate on playing the ball as they see it. I am not saying that batsmen should not play to the situation they face, this is something that is critical to success. The skill though, is can they accurately read the situation they are going into and react accordingly.

On Saturday, when we were 15-3, Dominic Brown and James Mann batted slowly, yes, but intelligently, as they recognised the importance of building a partnership at all costs. That was being mentally robust. Thankfully for us, Clifton missed that trick, and as well as Atif Sheikh bowled, we should not have really won that game. If we can continue to win the mental battles through the season, it should be worth some points, Saturday being a casing example.  

Is it time to call time on tea time?

As the rain hammered down on Saturday afternoon, frustrated cricketers around the country spent the day looking for things to do to keep them from boredom. With such a young side at Kimberley, it is normally the case that the changing room becomes a ‘play area’ with different versions of one-hand-one-bounce, slip catching, and football keeping the young pups occupied!

For myself and Sam on Saturday, we were able to enjoy the build up to the FA Cup Final, where his fiancée Victoria was singing Abide With Me and the National Anthem as part of her brilliant classical group Amore (they are definitely worth a listen!).

Losing time in a cricket match though is always a frustrating experience, as the reason everybody gives up their time on a Saturday, as well as their match fee, is to come and play. While I love a good game of changing room cricket, it is not the same as being out in the middle. One way that we often try to ‘save’ a bit of time in the game on a rain day, is to take tea early. It is this that has got me thinking this week.

What on earth are we doing have tea in the middle of a sporting match? On the face of it, it is just ludicrous that we stop the game then sit down to have a meal at an arbitrary point in the fixture. Could you imagine a 30 minute half time in the Six Nations or Premier League where both teams sat down to eat a nice spread of sandwiches, crisps, pizza and cakes before heading out for the second half? Or Sir Chris Hoy chomping on a some sausage rolls and chips with his cycling opponents in between sprint heats at the Olympics? It would hardly fit into the ‘marginal gains’ approach of Sir Dave Brailsford. Yet at over 6,000 cricket grounds around the country each week, we put down our bats, balls and gloves and break off for a nice spot of tea.

A typical cricket tea involves sandwiches and cakes

Some would say that this is an institution that is vital to keeping the traditions of our sport going. But that is just poppycock. Sport, and cricket in particular, are constantly evolving to meet the needs of its participants, and also their desires to maximise their performance. Quite frankly, an arbitrary tea break, does not meet those requirements in the vast number of situations. I would like to add at this point that this article is by no means a slight on the quality of the teas at Kimberley (which are exceptional, especially Karen’s chocolate cake) or on any of the teams in the Nottinghamshire Premier League. My argument is however a simple one, move the meal until after the game.

If the main tea was taken after the game, players would not only be able to eat without the worry of participating immediately after, but they could do so in a much more social environment, where they could have a (soft) drink and reflect on the game with the opposition. It would put an end to the real shame of teams, rushing off at the end of fixtures and encourage them to socialise with opponents, something that has sadly been lost from our sporting landscape.

So what would players and umpires do for food during the day I hear you scream!? Well I imagine the players they would do what they do one the other six days of the week, and eat when they want to making their own arrangements. For instance, an opening bowler might choose to eat a sandwich or spot of pasta they brought with them during the first innings if his team are batting first, while the opening batsman can eat when he is out. For umpires, a small spread could be provided to keep their energy levels up, and all players would be able to get some biscuits and cups or tea mid innings.

I know cricket is a game steeped in tradition, but in my opinion this is one tradition that needs to be evolved.

Now we are warming up for the cricket season, is it time to stretch ourselves?

Now we are a couple of weeks into the season, the initial excitement of being back outside on the cricket pitch has started to wear off and the realisation has kicked in that we need to work hard on the training ground if we are to reap the benefits on the Saturday’s.

I have been trying to run our training sessions differently this year, placing emphasis on high quality repetition, and practising with a clear focus on outcomes. The players seem to have responded well so far, and hopefully as the season goes on, that hard work will begin to pay off.

One area that I think we can develop both at training and prior to the matches, is the way we warm-up. This year I have been lucky enough to be part of the Nottinghamshire County Council Talented Coaches Scheme. During the past week as part of the scheme, I attended a session run by Sport981 on injury prevention and performance preparation. I found this a most eye-opening experience, particularly with regard to stretching.

Stretching before and after a game is considered
a must, but how much care do we take with it?

I have always found warming up for cricket a peculiar process. If you think of a typical invasion game such as rugby, football or hockey, your warm-up can be timed and planned around the fact that all players will soon be engaged in dynamic movement activity. Therefore a programme of stretching, pulse raising and sport specific practice routines can be planned to ensure players are at the perfect point of arousal prior to the match. It still bemuses me a little that Premier League footballers do all that preparation prior to a game then at half time, sit down for 15 minutes where their muscle temperature drops by up to 2 degrees and the body switches off from activity, and do nothing to prepare fully for the second half. Some research has suggested that is why injuries are common in the first ten minutes after half time as players muscles get back up to speed.

If we take the way we warm-up for cricket for example, this same problem can be accentuated by a few hours! We can spend 40 minutes doing a thorough warm-up then find out from the skipper “right boys, were batting first”. Suddenly, it is back to the pavilion and put your feet up for a couple of hours. Then bang, a couple of wickets, and you’re at the crease.

So how could we prepare more thoroughly? Well one of the techniques exposed to me during my session this week was the use of Self Myofascial Release or SMR. This technique usually involves a foam roller, or even a cricket ball, and is used to help stretch muscles and relieve tension in tight muscular groups. If done in combination with thorough dynamic stretching, and on a regular basis, it can improve muscle movement, increase the power base, and most crucially reduce the chance of repetitive injuries.

It is certainly an interesting question though why we all warm-up for cricket in the same way we would for playing football? Should we not start to plan our preparation around the different roles we are likely to play? Should a batsman go through a full warm-up routine as he prepares to go in next? Should the bowlers not have a lighter tea and hit the field for a warm-up earlier if you are fielding second (I know some who would not be keen!)? These are all questions I am considering as we look forward to an exciting double header this weekend, where a cool down is definitely on the agenda on Saturday evening!