Play hard, have a drink – the time-honoured ethos of club cricket
the length and breadth of the land, and one that, it seems, is slowly and almost
imperceptibly vanishing from the game as a result of, in no particular order: sexual
equality and the insistence that blokes are, you know, around the house
occasionally; (adherence to) drink-driving laws; the time-consuming bureaucratic
demands placed on skippers and umpires; and the general aggression that
permeates our society, perhaps under the effect of a media that needs to be
increasingly sensationalist to get your attention (YOU MASSIVE ***TS!!).
This waning of cordiality and general heat-under-the-collar is
not necessarily replicated at the top end of the sport, however, even though it
might not always be particularly visible to the TV viewer. No, the ever-diminishing
time and energy given over to socialising with opponents (yes, getting along
with people, howsoever lubricated, is entropic) is largely a matter of the
grass roots and a creeping belligerence that, if not caused by cricket, is certainly vented through the game. For all
the on-field machismo and histrionics, elite players still traditionally get
together at the end of a game or series to have a few beers and/or tell a few stories
in ‘the rooms’, an agora of shared ideas
and lo-tech information exchange.
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| pensive |
Now, I’m fairly sure that, under the down-to-earth regime of
Ottis Gibson, the current crop of West Indians will seek out their English
counterparts at the end of this week’s Edgbaston Test. Ottis may not have
played a great deal of international cricket himself (2 Tests, 15 ODIs), but he
was always a cerebral sort of cricketer – completing his ECB Level 3 coaching
badge during a three-year stint at Leek CC in the North Staffordshire and South
Cheshire League – and will undoubtedly encourage this kind of absorption of
their more illustrious opponents’ knowledge, know-how and nous.
While at Leek, from 1999 to 2001, he was invariably
available for a word for his amateur opponents – not so much on the pitch,
where he clearly meant business (albeit in a controlled way), but certainly in
the bar afterward. And it was the memory of this grinning amiability that led
me to request an interview with OG in advance of the current tour, and then,
when the tête-à-tête wasn’t forthcoming, to badger their Press Officer, Adriel
Richards, over four days at the Trent Bridge Test. I even accosted ‘Oti’ in the
pavilion on the last practice day, and despite a flicker of a smile as we briefly
reminisced about the NSSCL, he looked stressed, fatigued, and more than a
little besieged by the hugger-mugger coming from legendary Windies players of
yore, with men such as Michael Holding vocally critical of his man-management
of the likes of Ramnaresh Sarwan (in self-imposed exile 25 miles down the road
in Leicester), while not exactly slow to conjure the spectral brilliance of T20
superstar Chris Gayle (spectral in the sense of Nasser Hussain’s pet theory
that players get better when they are out of the side).
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| Ottis with his former skipper |
Anyway, thus it was that my efforts to secure the interview
came to naught, and this despite me being utterly genuine in conveying to
Adriel not only that the questions would steer clear of the Gayle issue or the ongoing
political struggles between the West Indies Cricket Board and the players’ union,
a dispute that must be every bit as tiresome as the absence of key players on
IPL duty is frustrating, but also that the interview would be published after the tour had finished. Ottis was
evidently disinclined to take the opportunity to utilise a friendly platform to
discuss the overall cricket culture in the Caribbean ,
its infrastructural and logistical issues, the way talent is identified and
funnelled up through the system to the top, his role in that, and the intrinsic
problems of being a region of sovereign states. Given the backstage pressures
and offstage grumbles, I understood his reticence. And I must acknowledge, too,
that there’s an obvious degree of self-interest in all this, all the more so
when I learned that he had decided he was doing no more one-on-ones. There
would have been kudos, no doubt; a coup, if not a scoop. Even so, I thought that
having played against him a few times might have stood me in good stead, even
though we didn’t really get off on the right foot…
* * *
The first time I played against OG was late in the summer of
1999, the year of Moddershall’s quadruple (and we did party like it was 1999). We had heard of him, of course – he had
played in the 1995 Test at Lord’s in which Staffordshire’s own Dominic Cork
debuted with 7 for 44 – but the truth is that he is far more famous now, as a
coach, than he probably ever was as a player. And there are folk in Barbados
who, if you were ever brave or foolish enough to engage them on the subject,
would gladly tell you that was but one of many a selectorial scandal visited on
their island’s cricketers – perhaps not in the “No Cummins, No Goings” class,
but a serious oversight all the same.
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| Ottis plays his second Test, at Cape Town, January 1999 |
As it always is when a club cricketer comes up against an international of whatever stature or calibre, it was an honour to play against Ottis, although it seemed odd to us that, only just turned 30, he couldn’t find a county that wanted him. It was only my second game back after seven-week lay-off brought about by a fractured fibula (at the elbow), which I’d managed to do by falling off an empty wheelie bin while trying to break into my parents’ house after the first night of the two-night Stone Charity Cup Final when, my hand forced by back spasms, I’d made 73 off 44 balls (and had 5 or 6 pints of Grolsch to celebrate), probably as well as I ever struck the ball.
With the back bedroom dormer window open in the July heat, I was convinced – post-Bacchanalia, euphoria still to ebb entirely – that a skip from car bumper to wheelie bin to garage roof and over was a sound idea, certainly better than waking your father at half-two in the morning (how quickly the 26-year-old became a teenager again!). However, the sound of the virtually weightless wheelie bin (upon which I had failed to land square as I bounded from the bumper) smashing into the garage door soon put paid to that notion – not only waking my father, but every cat and dog in the neighbourhood. I lay groaning on the tarmac drive for a while. Dad came down for a brief reccy and, assuming I was just sozzled, returned to bed. I clambered to my feet and, after a few minutes’ pacing up and down in an effort to walk off the pain, went inside, making it halfway up the stairs before fainting and tumbling back down, this new commotion again causing padre to stir. He wasn’t amused; neither was I. By the time the booze-anaesthetic had subsided, the pain was excruciating, although somehow my consciousness had yet to accept entirely that I was going to struggle to bat on the second night of the final…
Anyway, after several weeks out, watching us keep our noses in front in the race for the title, I came back for the last four league games of our run-in, starting with a win over Elworth (near Sandbach) before we took on Leek. My turn to face Ottis would have to wait until the game’s second innings, after we had skittled them for around 170. I was in early, first drop, and took guard realizing that it was a quickish pitch and that the cordon, which I’d walked past on the way out, were a fair way back (an old pro for my club, Jon Addison, once advised that, when facing quick bowling – the definition of which is always relative to your reflexes and courage – the worst mistake to make is to look back at how far away the ‘keeper is). And not only for Ottis. His new-ball partner, Richard Harris (who finished with 6 for 70 off about 12 overs), was also rushing it through.
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| 'Pasty' Harris: Ottis's new-ball partner |
‘Oti’ was bowling in the style that later became famous on
the county circuit during his Indian summer: hitting the crease without any
huge momentum from an inimitable side-to-side rocking approach, before a slow
lean-back, slightly closed-off delivery stride, and clueless action (in the
sense of giving no signals, no clues), generally looking to swing it away.
My first scoring shot was a tuck off the hips to wideish
long-leg. I scampered the first hard and, just as I was touching the bat down,
glanced over my shoulder to see if the second was on. However, at that precise
moment, my studs – slowly flattened on the county’s cricket clubs’ concrete, and, due
to my general slovenliness, left unchecked and unchanged – failed to penetrate the firm, shiny
surface and started to skid. In an effort to keep my balance and stop myself
doing the splits, my bat swung violently a-starboard, a reflex action. Only,
future coach Ottis was already marching diligently back to the bowler’s end
stumps and thus caught the full force of my blade just below his kneecap –
where you would tap him with a doctor’s hammer if testing his reflex actions – duly going down like a sack of the brown stuff
while I completed the second run, feeling like the teenager who had sneaked a
wee drink in his Dad’s best engraved crystal brandy glass only to drop it on
the tiled kitchen floor. “Sorry, bowler”, I said in a quivering voice. Three times. He didn’t respond, other than to flex his left leg at the knee. I, too, felt like genuflecting.
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| OG removes KP, LB' |
A storm was brewing and I readied myself to duck the
bumper…only, the bowler, displaying some of the nous that would later see him
employed as England’s fast bowling coach, gave me a slower ball, an inversion
of the thinking in the final of the 2007 Friend’s Provident Trophy that led him
– brilliantly, ingeniously – to bounce KP when on hat-trick ball, having memorably
nicked off Lumb and Ervine with the first two deliveries of Hampshire’s pursuit
of 312. Despite the scoreboard reading 0 for 2, KP obviously took up the challenge, clothing a pull slightly wide of
mid-on then falling lbw to Gibson a few overs later, securing the latter’s MoM
award.
Aside from a hooked six from Harris that landed on a stony
road, damaging the ball, and a square cut, from the only bad ball Ottis bowled, that almost went both for six and straight down third man’s gullet, I remember
little of the rest of my 40-ball innings of 52. I know that we won and that
Ottis, while sharp and clearly skilful, didn’t feel express. Maybe it was
because my reflexes were good back then; maybe it was because the deck was so
good you could get in position early, not fearing late seam movement. Either
way, it was a shock to see the speedgun registering him at 89 mph in that
Lord’s final, especially as a 38-year-old.
* * *
Next time we encountered Ottis, up at Leek the following season, I opened the batting and, with some confidence from the previous match, drilled
the very first ball of the game – overpitched in the search for swing and
colliding with my bat’s sweet spot – fractionally to the legside of the stumps,
only for mid-on (fielding far too straight but his position not corrected) to
fall on the ball and stop a certain boundary, a major statement left ‘unspoken’.
No matter, I went on to make 47, getting through Ottis’ opening spell with some
watchful defence, a constant internally-chanted mantra not to whip across the
line against his swing, and a couple of square-driven fours. Unfortunately, as
is often the case, I pulled a long-hop from an off-spinner to mid-wicket having
done the hard work against the pro.
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| Leek CC |
Despite ultimately giving it away, I took a huge amount from
this innings. Indeed, the fielder who made the stop from the first ball, Steve
Bailey, a board-stiff 38-year-old veteran and former Minor Counties player,
told me that I’d played Ottis better than any amateur in the league that summer (I was in decent nick that year, making 630 Premier League runs, only 6 of which came in the
return Leek fixture), while Ottis himself later bought me a drink and we
chatted away about technical and tactical issues (OK, and I badgered him like the 27-year-old
kidult I was, about who was the best this, and fastest that…).
* * *
During Ottis’s third and final season in the self-styled
‘Queen of the Moorlands’ (think Royston Vasey, but with more incest and people
dwelling in public toilets), the momentum built over the previous two seasons
swept Leek – with Stone and Longton, one of North Staffordshire’s traditional
‘big three’ – to an unprecedented treble of Premier League, Talbot Cup and
Staffordshire Cup. They were, it’s fair to say, a tidy outfit.
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| view over Leek to the Moorlands |
Our first 2001 encounter was a misty early-May afternoon atop
the hill at Moddershall. With mizzle in the air and dampness on the ground, it
was a far cry from Bridgetown .
Once again, I was opening – not the ideal place to be on a day such as this –
and, first ball of the game, Ottis bounced me (had he seen something?), a very
sharp delivery that I just about managed to jab to square leg from under my
armpit. I was awake. Given the temperature and his muscles being accustomed to a tropical climate, it’s fair to say it was a shock. Next ball was pitched up and
angling in slightly from his mid-crease delivery. I tried to flick the ball
though mid-wicket but had that horrible sensation as a batsman that you’ve ‘lost’ the ball
in its trajectory, swiftly followed, a nanosecond or two later, by the clunk of
ball on off-pole, which was uprooted and sent spiralling some distance back
toward the ‘keeper. Pretty comprehensive.
“Don’t worry about that, Scotty”, proffered the usually
taciturn and hulking figure of Dave Cartledge at slip as I shuffled past him to the pavilion, “nothing
you could have done”. I’d very much like to confirm he was right, but I
honestly couldn’t say, for the same reason that I couldn’t point out a
pickpocket in an identity parade. And I had been mugged. Once the demon
bottom-hand had decided to involve itself where it had no business being
(itself a sign that, unconsciously, I didn’t rate my chances of survival, or was
so discombobulated by the first ball and the dank conditions that it became a
case of grab what you can), my goose was effectively cooked. A two-card trick, with much legerdemain. On your way, son.
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| a lot on his plate |
The last game against OG, up at Leek in July, saw me ride my
luck to another 52 as I was twice shelled in the slips in the third over, and
again at gully a short while after throwing the kitchen sink at a rare
half-volley, but also managed to hook Ottis up the bank for four (having correctly
guessed he was going to bang it in!). We lost the game and, as I recall,
flirted with relegation that season, our first campaign the departure of Addison,
who’d been with us as pro since 1994. As for Leek, they signed Albie Morkel the
following year and remained a powerful side, if not quite good enough to win
the league again, clearly missing Ottis’s extroversion and galvanising effect.
* * *
The only other time that I had seen Ottis in the flesh
between that day and last month’s Test match in Nottingham was in the summer of
2006, also at Trent
Bridge Hound Road
entrance when we jumped out of the car. “Hello Ottis,” I said, catching his eye. “Hi there,” he replied,
struggling at first to place me (and it’s fair to say that, with spread of
midriff and desertification of scalp, 2006-me looked more like 2001-me than
2011-me did its 2006 precursor). “I played against you when you were at Leek…”
“Oh yeah,” he said, memory suddenly unfreezing. “Moddershall. How are things up there?”
Of course, I’d like to think he remembered me for my
batsmanship, but the overwhelming likelihood is that it was for the pestering
in the bar (or starfucking, if you were being uncharitable). Either way, it was
gratifying – not just for me, but for good quality club cricket – to have him
recollect some details of his time in North Staffordshire .
Certainly, I’d wager that his hands-on attitude, lack of ego and generosity of spirit would see him ranked pretty much at the top of Leek’s list
of favourite pros (certainly above Shahid Afridi and Tino Best).
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| Ottis faces the music |
It’s a pity he wasn’t quite as relaxed, chatty and chillaxed
the next time I saw him at the back of the Trent Bridge pavilion, leaving his
end-of-match press conference having fronted up to face whatever deliveries the
‘opposition’ had to throw at him. Of course, there has been a lot of water pass
under Ottis’s bridge since that day in 2006, including a golden 2007, a little
over two years as England’s fast-bowling coach, and the same in the West Indian
hotseat, and suffice to say he looked a good deal more vexed in late May than
he ever did at Leek – or for that matter while working with Andy Flower. If not irate, exactly, then certainly not irie.
Right now he is doing a fair job of trying to instil a work
ethic in a team lacking match-winners, making them hard to beat, but I sensed that he will not miss the internecine
squabbles and political intrigues of Caribbean
cricket, issues that he might or might not have wished to talk about but probably
couldn’t address explicitly. Even so, he could always have done so in the
abstract, under cover, using all the disguise and accuracy of his bouncer those eleven Mays ago.
* You may also enjoy this piece about Imran Tahir, or this one comparing Immy’s stint with that of Rangana Herath.
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* You may also enjoy this piece about Imran Tahir, or this one comparing Immy’s stint with that of Rangana Herath.
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