Picture the scene: some time in the very near future, an
exceptionally gifted yet unheralded and almost completely unknown fieldsman – a
club cricketer from the Shires, a man off the Maidan – swoops at cover in the
T20 World Cup semifinal and throws down the stumps, removing Shane Watson or
Chris Gayle or Virat Kohli. A couple of hours passing will reveal that it’s the
match-winning moment and yet no-one bats an eyelid, other than in astonishment
at the uncanny anticipation, suppleness of the gather, and laser-like accuracy
of the throw.
What’s to stop it happening, this glory of a plumber or
plasterer, policeman or pilot?
Well, unfortunately, it’s the good old Laws of the game
(2.3) and, beyond that, the playing conditions for all ICC tournaments. You see,
our hero is not a substitute fielder, on for an injured (or ‘injured’) player.
This is a designated specialist fielding
replacement. A ringer, only legal.
But why is this scenario at present just a fantasy, a
pipedream – and an apparently unpalatable one, too, if attempts to get this
piece published are anything to go by? Why such a reflex invocation of tradition
when contemplating this gimmick (and it is, unapologetically, a gimmick)? Should
this potentiality of cricket – and not really that radical a one, when seen in
proper context – at least be examined critically and debated? Maybe the
supporters would like to see it.
Maybe…
Anyway, there seems little prima facie reason or point to the traditionalists bridling about
it contravening some imagined essence of the game – one editor said “I don't
think it’s going to happen and I don’t think it should. They don’t do it in
baseball, even though there is the money. Balancing the different skill sets
and strengths and weaknesses is part of the interest” – especially for
Twenty20, to which it would be limited. I don’t know whether people have been
nodding off during the Maxx Mobile Strategic Time-Out, but the good ship
Gimmick has long since sailed. T20 has long since prostrated itself afore the
deities of commerce and entertainment: the cucumber sandwiches are
zingerburgers; almost nothing on the clothes, pitch, umpires or equipment is not
a billboard; boundaries are greeted not by polite applause but by the plosive
bursts of techno-pop (their greater frequency not correlated to the excitement
they educe) and choreographed jerking from pompom-wielding hardbodies.
We are in the era of cricketainment.
Not that all in the sports-watching fraternity consider entertainment the be-all and end-all. There are
naysayers, and some of them not at all conservative. The counter position has perhaps
been most eloquently expressed by the eminent football writer Jonathan Wilson:
One of sport’s great
strengths is that the better side does not always win: that a team with poorer
players can, through doggedness, effort and organization, prevail … One of the
most depressing things about the modern breed of armchair fan is their demand
to be entertained, their seeming belief that coaches are somehow answerable to
them. They’re not. Sport is about struggle, about sides trying their utmost to
win using whatever means they can within the rules and the spirit of the game
as they interpret it. And if that means playing defensively, so be it.
He was talking about fitbaw, of course, o jogo bonito, and while
the point is less valid in connection to T20, where a defensive mindset is clearly
counter-productive, it could nevertheless be apt for ‘cricket as a whole’ (and
it is surely in this articulation that cricket’s traditionalists tolerate T20).
But of course Twenty20 is cricket’s pioneering tool, its
commercial cutting edge – not only financing the rest of the game, ensuring
that, to paraphrase Nasser, “your New Zealands and West Indies and Sri Lankas”
remain part of what is already a small Test-playing pool, but also ensuring
that new generations, faced with an ever-pluralising range of leisure options, are
attracted to the game. It is, we are told,
the format that is going to ‘crack’
America (ah, the old trope of a bandwagon pushing West across new frontiers),
and if special teams – specialist kicking units for both goal and punting to
clear lines, specialist offence and defence – are good enough for American
football, then why shouldn’t it be acceptable for cricket and this era of
rampant made-for-TV boom-boom?
In many respects, cricket has of course already been
Americanised. The IPL’s kitschy razzmatazz, the fluff and the cheerleaders, the
advertising timeouts and macho franchise names, are a template every bit a part
of the global omniculture as the golden arches. It has spawned the Champions
League, too, a grotesquely imbalanced and unloved
tournament that, this month, South African bums have shown little
inclination to find seats for, let alone shuffle to the edge of them.
But let’s not be too quick to deride Twenty20 per se on account of these gaudy superfluities
when the format has clearly hothoused existing technical (and perhaps tactical)
skill-sets, as well as developing new ones, all of which have fed back into longer
forms of the game and created variety. It would be churlish not to acknowledge
that the slower ball bouncer, scoop and ramp shots and switch-hits owe their proliferation
to T20 and are intriguing innovations.
As for fielding, after a great leap forward in the 1990s, levels
have continued to improve as every single run has been struggled over, with the
baseball techniques of relay throws and sliding pick-ups having become
commonplace. But despite the fact that it’s no longer the game’s poor third
relation – sabermetrics might indicate just how much of a difference it could
make – there are still a few fielding passengers, stuffed into the side like a
favourite overcoat into a suitcase on the very reasonable basis that, y’know, their
batting and bowling skills kinda demand it. Not that such ovoid figures ought
to be euthanised for the sake of some crack Soviet-style fielding regimen, you
understand. (Funnily enough, another editor to reject this pitch grabbed very
much the wrong end of the stick here: “Not too sure about the whole idea of
treating fielding as an add-on skill. Seems a bit of a throwback to the days
when real men didn’t get their whites dirty. Also the idea that cricket can be
broken down to its component parts and some or all of them jazzed up for the
Americans.”)
Even so, we could argue that, the odd comedy misfield notwithstanding,
this facet of the game could be improved for the benefit of spectators, on the
basis that it’s the one skill that everyone at the ground can appreciate more
or less equally, regardless of the angle at which they’re sat. And the way?
Yep: introduce fielding special teams, maybe three or four whiz fielders who
can replace a few of the lumberers, which will not only elevate the overall
standard of fielding but also the overall level of the entertainment: actual cricket entertainment – what the sort
of people I’d rather not talk to may call ‘the spectator experience’ – not the
boundary writhers and infantilised hucksterism of the commentary.
Still holding the wrong end of the stick, the aforementioned
editor continued: “I think part of [my problem with it]…is the sort of implicit
suggestion that there aren’t four top-class fielders in most international T20
teams – or, to put it another way, that the standard of fielding can be raised
by such a spectacular extent from its current level as to make this sort of
experiment worthwhile”. But there are two misconceptions here: (a) we aren’t
necessarily talking about international
teams; and (b) it isn’t at all relevant how many excellent fielders there are.
It’s about how many poor ones there are. In any case, the actual number of
replacements, the nuts and bolts of it all, could be whatever the
administrators want. An innings could be divided up into five-over blocks; each
team has four designated replacements and three of them can come on for each
bloc… It is as open to tinkering as a Ranieri midfield.
Look at it the situation this way: if entertainment is about
providing guaranteed showmanship (at good value) for the oft-neglected punter,
then depriving the crowd of the world’s best fielders of the appropriate stage
simply because they aren’t good enough batters or bowlers is illogical
(assuming you want excellence, not slapstick). Is it not fair that the best
fielders get the chance to appear on the biggest stage? Why ever not open up the possibility (in T20) of
being selected solely for your fielding? There are certainly some cricketers
out there who may now be household names, even when that name is Sybrand
Engelbrecht, about whom they
raved at the 2008 Under-19 World Cup in Malaysia due to some sensational catches. He also went to the CL
T20 in 2009 but the sole game he played for Cape Cobras
saw him bowl a single over and not bat. Be that as it may, several credible
witnesses have said that he was the best fielder they have ever seen.
Some domestic English fielders who could have lit up
international cricket in this role include former Derbyshire man Garry Park,
Chris Taylor
of Gloucestershire, Lancashire’s Steven
Croft and, of course, Gary Pratt,
at present famous for his contribution to that
series, which got him on that bus
ride. Perhaps Pratt does occasionally dine out on it – and why ever not, if
needs must – but playing Minor Counties cricket for Cumberland and peddling occasional
anecdotes of his larks surfing English cricket’s first sustained wave of
top-rank competence are not going to sustain him forever. The fact is that Pratt
had certain skills that, in different circumstances, could have featured
regularly, and with complete legitimacy,
at international level (notwithstanding the fact that, under Fletcher, he
clearly wasn’t at Trent
Bridge by accident).
Fielding special teams would permit the upward flow of
supremely talented fielders and recognise fully that it is a gift in its own
right. The innovation would be supremely inclusive and meritocratic, giving
club cricketers the legitimate chance
to represent their county, and even perhaps their country (again, quite how the
payments would be worked out, or how it would be possible to be available on a
semi-pro or freelance basis is a problem for the market and for individual
choice).
Furthermore, only having to field for 10 of 20 overs (and
let’s face it, the joy of fielding, if ever there, is always the first thing to
go) could prolong the careers of some iconic, box-office players: they and
their skippers might think that it’s worth hiding them for ten overs (four of
which will be spent bowling), if that’s the mandatory amount for all 11 genuine
team members. And this scenario also creates a whole new tactical dimension:
which five-over blocks to keep the ageing spinner on, etc.
Then there could be some ‘unforseen’ effects (if the ensuing
speculation is not itself a paradox): specialist fielders could acquire a
general confidence in their game and become actual players, pros. Conversely, put
under the spotlight solely for their fielding, with no second string to fall
back on, they could effectively ‘yip up’ and the coach might have to factor
this in to selectorial decisions. However, they would no doubt produce stories.
And we are an unremittingly narrative species in the way we process the world
(as neuroscience increasingly shows), hence the love of sport, which is live
theatre, an existential drama: Bollywood and Hollywood, with no guarantee the good guys
will win.
Finally, and this is where a traditionalist may bridle, it
will permit certain celebrity cricketers without compromising the essential
meritocracy of the bat-versus-ball battle. Usain Bolt has expressed a
desire to play for Manchester United, but it is perhaps as a cricketer that
his truer non-sprinting talent lies. It’s well known that he’s bredren with Chris Gayle and has been
talked of as a
possible Big Bash player. Well, we don’t really know of his ability
(undoubtedly, he would be the fastest person to one T20 run), but I’m pretty
sure he could do a job in the outfield!
