MIND GAMES: AN INTERVIEW WITH JEREMY SNAPE

By the end of the summer of 1998, a season in which he had failed to make a single first-class appearance, it is fair to say that Staffordshire-born cricketer Jeremy Snape was meandering through a modest, largely unfulfilling career at Northamptonshire. However, a timely move to equally unfashionable Gloucestershire gave his career take-off: he quickly became a vital, point-fielding, middle-order-scrapping, off-spinning cog in the well-oiled and highly successful limited-overs machine that was being assembled there by John Bracewell, as was later recognized by his selection for 10 England ODIs. In 2003, he took his considerable know-how to Leicestershire, where more unlikely team success followed in the shape of their victory in the the second Twenty20 Cup (2004). Snape’s innovative captaincy and development of a rhythm-disrupting ‘moon ball’ in their 2006 repeat triumph earned him another England call-up for the first Twenty20 World Cup in 2007.

For all that, Jeremy was, by his own admission, a fairly limited cricketer and it is really in retirement that his profile in the cricket world has taken off. Having attained a Master’s Degree in Sports Psychology from Loughborough University, in 2005 he founded a consultancy, Sporting Edge, while still playing for the Foxes. The catalyst for this second career came with his recruitment by Leicester-based Jaipuri businessman, Manoj Bedale, to act as psychologist to the franchise he had just bought in the fledgling IPL: Rajasthan Royals. It is now well-known that, under the inspirational, imaginative captaincy of Shane Warne (a man previously known for his outspoken contempt for – or, being slightly kinder, scepticism of – the perceived need for support staff such as Snape, once describing the coach as “what you travel to the ground on”), the rank-outsider Royals were shock winners, and that Snape’s work impressed their other high-profile import, Graeme Smith, to such an extent that a job with the South African team was offered.

Late last year, I caught up with Jeremy – an old Staffs Juniors teammate off whom I once spilled 3 catches in an over-and-a-half against Shropshire at Lilleshall (I was keeping; he was bowling nippy inswingers) – and asked him not only about his experience with South Africa but also about some more general aspects of being a ‘performance coach’ with an elite sports team…

Can you pinpoint a precise moment when the desire to move into sports psychology first took hold?

I guess I always knew that the challenge in my own game was more mental than technical – sometimes even changing technique under pressure – and the fear of failure that came with that made it a very difficult place to be. So I knew that the mental game and my ability to change and adapt, take on different techniques, bat in different positions, and bowl in different styles was always going to be driven by that attitude. That’s what I found so fascinating through the twenty years that I played.

        Obviously, the highest position I got to was playing for England. In front of 120,000 people in India I managed to build a sort of psychological routine that helped me to cope with that and shut out the noise of the screaming locals. That was a big step forward for me. I realized that I could actually create my own zone, as it were, to perform in, and I think that was a good thing.

       I did see a few sports psychologists around that time but I never really felt that anyone had had the experience of playing in high-level pressure, so I took my learning mainly from the practical side, which were the players and the coaches, and their philosophy on things.

That was my next question, actually: whether there were any people from the cricketing world – players, captains, or coaches that you’ve either played with or against – who have been especially influential on your thinking as a cricketer or sports psychologist, be that directly, through advice, or indirectly, through example.

Well, someone like John Bracewell approached the game in a very much more scientific way than I’d seen before and that really appealed to me. I guess coaching is a blend of the science and the art and John Bracewell seemed to do that quite well, whereas a lot of coaches I’d worked with had got quite a haphazard way of doing it. There definitely seemed to be some kind of system [with Bracewell].

       Other influences would be players themselves, people like Nasser Hussain, and [other sportsmen like] Martin Johnson, who lives locally. People like that who lead by example, who just get on with it and lead from the front. That’s a great thing to learn from. But then there are also people like Michael Vaughan who are a bit more relaxed about it but who also have the same sort of steeliness under pressure. That also taught me that there wasn’t only one particular way of doing things and that you could find your own way. So that made it all the more exciting to try and find out what that blueprint was.

I noticed that your official title with the South African cricket squad was described as both “Performance Coach” and “Mental Conditioning Coach”. You’ve said that the role combined cricket coaching and psychological training. Perhaps you could explain a little about how flexible or circumscribed your role is in and around a group, how your role dovetailed with other leaders in the group…

This very much depends on the context that you’re working in, on the philosophy of the leader in the group. When I was working with South Africa under Mickey Arthur there was a lot of freedom to address a wide range of issues, whether it be at a team level, small groups, or one-on-one. Part of the job was to pre-empt situations down the line and help to put coping strategies in place for that, organizationally. Also to support him and Graeme [Smith] in their own decision-making, with selections and press conferences – not necessarily to pick the team, just to help them to have an objective sounding-board to keep them on track with their longer-term aspirations and things – and just linking in to the management team to make sure that everyone was being effective, really. So, I’d often get involved in various areas with other members of the management team where they were struggling to get a player on to the physiotherapist’s bench or in to the fitness schedules or whatever. 

       More recently, with Corrie van Zyl, there’s been a slightly different approach. Mickey’s English-South African, while Corrie’s Afrikaans-South African. With him it was more of a focussed psychological role looking at mental skills, psychometric profiling and one-on-one sessions that were targeted for specific changes rather than a perhaps more informal, counselling-style approach [under Arthur].

       So, yeah, the way you work within an organization would be dependent upon the brief, really, and the way the management sees your role. And that crosses over into business in the same way.

Talking of the ‘transferability’ of your techniques or method, it seems to me that your general principles are fairly straightforward (which is not to say that putting them into practice is quite as easy!!). For instance, you have continually stressed the importance of remaining focussed on processes rather than outcomes, of giving team members clarity over their roles, and of replicating hostile environments in training scenarios in order to make players accustomed to producing under pressure. Sporting Edge also works with businesses, which implies that your methods or techniques are applicable to any domain in which there’s a premium on high performance within a competitive environment. Is that fair enough? Are your principles so easily transferable from cricket to business, or between different sports?

Well, obviously there are some very generic principles in both leadership and team development. For example, in team development, the stages of change, or stages of development, are well known. There are various models but one of them is ‘forming, storming, norming, performing’. Teams go through various dynamic stages where there’s in-fighting and alignment and people moving towards their goals. So those can be linked very clearly to sports teams and business teams, because it’s just human interaction.

        And then the other thing is this idea of leadership where you’ve got to get a balance of the three main skills of a leader: challenging people, supporting people, and inspiring people. And again, they are generic enough to be understood by both coaches and business leaders but the way they use those in the practical sense is very much domain-specific.

       So that’s the key, really, I think: to understand the practical context that people are working in and to be able to fit those [principles] to the organization you’re working with. I think that’s been one of my strengths. Because I’ve come from a practical background and then moved into research, I’m able to look at problems from that angle, rather than being led by research and thinking how I could make that fit the environment. I think the ability to make things fit is crucial. Lots and lots of psychologists know lots and lots of information and lots and lots of theories, but unless you can make that real for the people that you’re working with and get them to adopt it as their new style, then you’re going to get a blockage.

I wanted to ask you about how you carry yourself when around a group with which you’re working – when you are in a dressing room environment, or even socialising with team members, do you have to be ‘on guard’ at all times?

It is difficult to manage that sometimes, especially when I’d probably be at a similar age to a lot of the guys that I was working with. But it’s something that you develop over time and, as I get older, I’m sure that sort of distance from the team will be created naturally as they’re in their twenties and I get into my forties.

By extension, then, does a conflict ever arise between telling the truth and what might be called an ‘emotional tactics’ or ‘psychological massaging’ that you have to perform in order to keep players’ moods positive? White lies.

I think the key thing is being authentic. Positive rhetoric doesn’t get you anywhere, really, especially in high-profile sports teams. They want the genuine belief that the players and team can progress. Sometimes you just have to be very honest and say “Guys, we’re struggling here”. But you’ve also got to be slightly more aspirational and slightly more positive than the group in general because you’re ultimately trying to lift them all the time. So whether you’re using something quite negative to motivate them or something quite shiny and bright to motivate them, that’s your job to work out what that is and move them forward.

        I think that knowledge and skills are very important to psychologists, but the relationships within the team are critical, and if the players know that you’re on their side and care very deeply about their individual performance and team performance then, to be honest, you’re half way there to being able to make an impact. That was a barrier that I faced early in the South African job – especially because it was a tour of England. They were trying to work out whether I was a spy in the camp. But after two years now I’ve got some strong relationships and I’ve been able to make some strong impacts.

On the subject of impacts, it seems to me that – in sport and in life – people may fail to realize their potential for a number of reasons: there are uncontrollable external events that derail a life (the death of a loved one, a car crash, financial ruination, illness, etc), events which might – as far as realizing one’s potential is concerned – be definitive, utterly beyond the scope of a psychological intervention. Then there are ‘natural’ barriers formed by someone’s levels of talent, which similarly cannot be radically altered by psychological means (let’s call this the ‘silk purse, sow’s ear’ theory…). Beyond these barriers, however, a psychologist must see a large sphere of potential intervention and influence. So, do you think there is an intrinsic limit to the scope or effectiveness of an ‘intervention’ by a sports psychologist, a barrier perhaps provided by either an individual player’s ‘character’ or by a culture? Or can these be eroded away?

Often, certain teams will have a particular mindset and a receptiveness to change, as do individuals. Again, that depends on the leadership – have people been talking about growth and development and learning and personal change? Or have they been talking about talent, intelligence, and skill (which are very much entities that you’ve either got or you haven’t)? I think the healthiest environments and the healthiest individuals believe in growth and development, and that’s something, obviously, that can bring in specialists and challenge people to move toward their potential.

        So, there is a case that teams have barriers or resistance to new information and psychology but, again, you’ve just got to back yourself to get to understand the people and, generally, after a period of time, you do get to know what drives the people individually and that’s when you can start to make change. But it’s better to be with people for longer periods of time, and longer contact time, because then you see them in work, outside work, on highs, in lows, and you get to know the behavioural profile of people so that you can start to pick your time. And that’s one of the biggest skills of a psychologist: to know when just to be a psychologist, and when to do psychology. Sometimes it’s actually best just to sit back and watch, and not say anything. When you feel like you’ve got a lot of passion and information that you want to give, it’s sometimes difficult to do that, but I think people respect you when you stay quiet, let the guys be, and sort of think through it a little bit.

Inevitably, I have to ask you something about the phenomenon of choking, a charge thrown at the South African team ever since the Klusener/Donald run out at the 1999 World Cup and then with the Duckworth/Lewis fiasco at the next that caused their elimination. Firstly, do you think it’s too simplistic – perhaps even malicious – to ascribe this trait to the South Africans, as though the label “choker” encapsulated some sort of national characteristic, particularly when there could be perfectly good cricketing (i.e. non-psychological) reasons for some of their high-profile defeats?

I actually don’t think it is a fair tag. I’ve looked into it and there’s no particular pattern, especially with the South African team. There are just so many different variables that you could look at, with tactics, selection, preparation, individual thought-processes at the time… And it’s also very difficult to say when a game was lost, you know. It might be that people say that somebody choked in the last over of the game, but actually the more ‘criminal’ mistakes might often be made earlier in the day in cricket. So, it’s very difficult to pinpoint whether that was choking or normal underperformance.

        But there’s no doubt that a finite tag like that has quite an impact on a team and it’s something that they have to shake off at some stage and, ultimately, the performance mindset of an individual and a team has to be very specific and optimistic. You’ve got to know your game, know your plan, be very aware of where the game context is at that moment and do what’s…not necessarily do what you planned, but do what’s effective at the time, and I think that if you can keep that mindset quite open and also commit to that plan once you’ve re-jigged it or stuck with it, then that’s probably the most important thing in terms of execution of your skills.

        Often we see people holding back because of a lack of commitment to the plans and that can quite simply be because people have started to look at the distractions and what might happen if they fail.

So, could the “choker” label become a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’: the more it’s said (justifiably or otherwise) in the media, the more it penetrates the dressing room, the more it’s believed (privately or collectively), and thus the more it happens?

Again that just depends on the ability of an individual, first, but also of a team, to zone in on what’s important. And the ‘chokers’ tag isn’t important when the bowler’s running in to bowl, you know. The key processes of a player’s performance strategy and psychological routine are what’s important. And those processes make sure that you’re insulated against any distractions. It means that you probably deliver your best delivery, your best bowling. And if you do that then you’re more likely to win the situation. And if you’re more likely to win situation after situation, then you’re probably going to win the game.

        So, that’s the way you’d break down from the way the media talk about ‘choking’. You’d drill it down to an individual situation and you’d try and win the moments by people being focussed on what their job is and being aware of where the game is going.

You have said elsewhere that the last 15 years in cricket have been about working on players’ bodies and the next 15 will be about working on their minds. So, that should keep you busy…

Yeah, it’s an interesting field and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my first few years in it.

I have written in brief elsewhere on the “chokers” tag as being less to do with representing the truth of a situation as it is a pragmatic act designed to affect others’ behaviour: in short, a stick to beat them with...

[photo © Hannah Edwards] 

Tweet

DON'T MENTION THE "C-WORD"

A Hard Day's Night

By now – and excuse the pun – the word must really stick in the throat. Chokers… Powerful things, words, powerful enough to make you, well, choke. For sticks and stones do break bones, but names can also sometimes hurt. Indeed, a word – an insult – can be heard so often that, embedded in one’s most intimate thoughts, it eventually comes to be believed (“you’re nothing but a waste of space”). A self-fulfilling prophecy. But what exactly does the ‘chokers’ tag mean? And is it true? 

We should first acknowledge that meaning is a slippery thing – y’know what I mean? And yet, despite all the difficulties we get in to with language – not meaning what we say, not saying what we mean – people nevertheless tend to assume that meaning is pretty stable and transparent. All one needs to do is pull words from a vocabulary, a dictionary, either alone or in combinations, and apply them correctly to things or events in ‘reality’, right?

Wrong. Talk to linguistics professors (as I’m sure you often do) and what will become apparent is the lack of any consensus over how meaning and language work. One only has to consider such everyday words as ‘justice’, ‘truth’ or ‘beauty’ to realize that, even if the abstract meaning is agreed upon, there’s no simple, transparent correspondence between the words on the page, or our lips, and the things in reality (or ‘referents’).

Furthermore, the same referent can have more than one word – googly, wrong’un or Bosie?; lap, paddle, or sweep?; bouncer or bumper? – while what one culture sees as a single referent can be, for another, several distinct things, whence the Inuit having twenty-nine different words for snow!

So, rather than reflect a reality that’s there for all to see, words shape – and are shaped by – reality. They are tools for getting things done: promising, apologising, marrying; distracting, intimidating; not falling through a specific type of ice while hunting... And they are thus anything but neutral – quite often weapons, in fact. All the best sledgers know that you don’t have to be truthful to have the desired effect…

In order for slippery, specialised words to stick to a referent – the C-word to a cricket team, for instance – an authoritative source or expert is usually required. Labels must be correctly applied (it can sometimes be a question of life and death). So it was that, in the aftermath of the Proteas’ exit from the World Cup, the CEO of Cricket South Africa, Gerald Majola, confessed, in a manner redolent of a new inductee at Alcoholics Anonymous: “We've always had this chokers tag with us; unfortunately we've allowed it to stick. We have to accept the problem and then deal with it.”

For all Majola’s seniority and tangible patriotic heartache, perhaps his expert credentials are not so watertight. Maybe a more authoritative source is provided by the sports psychologist Jeremy Snape, former Performance Director with the South African team and still engaged with them in a consultative capacity.

Snape’s general definition of choking is “poor decision-making under pressure” and he draws a distinction between that and “normal underperformance”. Furthermore, he argues that “there are so many different variables you could look at, with tactics, selection, preparation, and decisions, that it’s impossible to pinpoint when a match was lost.” Perhaps with Klusener’s hero-to-zero performance in the 1999 semi-final in mind, he continued: “What is to say that failure to deliver skills in the last over was more ‘criminal’ than an error made at the start of a game?”

With a post-World Cup de-brief to conduct following his IPL commitments with Rajasthan Royals, Snape is still far too involved with the team to offer a public verdict on the latest disappointment but says that he would first look to analyse “the statistical evidence for par scores, percentage of games won chasing under lights, etc” before reaching any firm conclusions.

So, whether or not the C-word corresponds to a trait of South African sportsmen (a Rugby World Cup victory suggests otherwise), to this cricket team (again, chasing down 414 in a Test match in Australia is strong counter-evidence), or even just to a set of performances on a particular day, one thing is certain: they will only un-stick the label, only silence the braying armchair punditariat and journalists tipsy on schadenfreude, by producing a high-profile victory. And when they do, the monkey on their back and albatross around their neck will be delighted for a change of company. 

Tweet

PATHBEATING WOLLATON C.C. SAY "MY WAY OR HIGHWAY" TO "NO-PAY, NO-PLAY" STAYAWAY A.J.K GRAY FROM COLWYN BAY…

Spring’s eternal renewal is upon us and a new cricket season is almost here, yet the same old noxious atmosphere prevails between the fiercely competitive clubs of the Nottinghamshire Premier League. Plus ça change… As ever, the focus of the generalized rag-loss and wild accusation-mongering is the amount of illicit money that some clubs are allegedly shelling out in backhanders, in the process riding roughshod over NPL rules permitting only two paid players per club.

In the past, eyebrows have been raised to Ancelotti-esque levels over the way in which one club (who shall remain anonymous, for no other reason than their strong Caribbean associations might otherwise elicit counter-accusations of racism) have been able to comply, ostensibly, with this two-pro rule and yet still field teams containing ten players with first-class experience, players who presumably could have commanded a sizeable fee elsewhere. Other clubs have had ex-England opening bowlers make the short trip up from Kent without financial recompense – a sacrifice one can only assume is made on account of the exquisite, delicate texture of the sponge cake on offer at the unnamed club near Papplewick Hall.

raised eyebrows

Anyway, either the League Executive considers the whole thing unpoliceable, and so washes its hands of it, or it tacitly condones such “financial doping”. Thus the sniping and backbiting, the tittle-tattle and resentment fester away. The only good thing that can be said about it all is that at least they’re environmentally friendly, all these recycled grievances…

Good to see, then, that not only are Wollaton CC not getting bogged down in the mudslinging, but also that they are in the vanguard of clubs finding more creative solutions (than covert payments) to their team-strengthening needs. News on their website announces that they are about to follow in the footsteps of several elite football clubs and forge links with other cricket clubs that will serve them as ‘academies,’ or feeder clubs (much like Beveren are for Arsenal, or Internacional of Brazil are for Spurs), providing them, so they hope, with a cost-free stream of talent. Great Idea!!

Details are still hazy, but sources tell me that the partners they’ve lined up are:

ST. NEMYAP – a secluded Cornish fishing village selected by Fighter and Botty as the hub of their short-lived and ill-fated import/export enterprise, also renowned for the quality of both its pasties and hit-the-deck-type bowlers (got to village KO final in 2003).

LAGELLI – small town on Anglesey visited by ‘Shapo’ as a youngster and for whom he got roped in to turning out in a big match against some swarthy fellas from the mainland, playing the shot that won the cup (a late cut for two).

EKAMRO – a village deep in the highlands of Western Cameroon (accessible only by boat) to which cricket was introduced in 1886 by a mission led by Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Savill. Ever since, the village shaman has been providing Wollaton with mysterious potions said to increase your ability to nudge it into gaps for ones and twos by nearly 24%. Word has it that they’ve got a half-decent quick who’s been making ripples in the local leagues – although the standard’s a bit iffy, I believe.

So, next year Wollaton are going to incorporate the names of these clubs into their own, as well as change the CC of cricket club to ODEW (Organization for the Development of Excellent Wickets). As of 2012, they are to be known as:

ST. NEMYAP LAGELLI EKAMRO WOLLATON O.D.E.W

Bit of a mouthful, if you ask me, but Management reckon it encapsulates not only their new identity but their “core values” as a club. Well, read backwards at least…

All the Prem clubs would do well to take a leaf out of their book, rather than their chequebook.

Tweet

NO COUNTY FOR YOUNG MEN

Respect your elders, they say – “they” being your elders, usually while wiping the biscuit crumbs off a slightly frayed item of grubby, inappropriate leisurewear, and perhaps cuffing some whippersnapper around the ear.

Nowhere is this self-appointed gerontocracy more entrenched (always with the possible exception of the Vatican, of course) than among that slowly disappearing community of devoted club cricket-watchers – or badgers – whose Saturday afternoon ritual entails wedging themselves into uncomfortable benches, chuntering distractedly, and berating “the youth” (i.e. anyone of working age) for their general cricketing inferiority, as scientifically measured by the formula: nostalgia + prejudice ÷ utter lack of joie de vivre. Of course, these oldsters had to contend not only with uncovered pitches and playing in snow, but kit made from Hessian and the death penalty for front-foot no-balls. So, respect tha elders...

badger baiting or badger batting...?

Despite their bench-bound immobility, these venerable beige-clad sages – largely concentrated to the north of the Fosse Way, experts believe – seldom fail to quaff the regulation quota of ale: four pints for bog-standard self-indulgent reminiscence, a gallon for the sort of full-blown verbal tirade that often ends with an intervention from “the Clown” (as the Club Chairman is known) or Her Majesty’s Constabulary.

Thus it was my great pleasure to meet with Staffordshire’s most famous and curmudgeonly cricket badger – Mr Frank Wisdom, a man who has watched in the region of 3,000 cricket matches (“and I kept a better bloody scorebook on over half of those than the idiots in the scorebox”) – just as he was having his fifth pint ferried over from the bar by some dutiful rapscallion who didn’t “know he was born.” 81 not out and still fresh as a daisy, still taking his thermos of tea, snappin’ and scorebook to watch County Second XI cricket on the many windswept grounds of England during the week, Frank nonetheless enjoys a tipple of a weekend. Or eight. And it was in a state of incipient inebriation that I found him, dribbling a little as he held forth to his bench-warming compadres on several of the worrying trends afflicting the game that has defined his life. For the 712th time.

Frank Wisdom (left) celebrates his club's maiden league title

“Loada rubbish,” he brayed. “No sooner have I got me ‘ead round this limited overs malarkey when it all goes and bloody changes. I tell yer, this flamin’ Twenty20 lark’s been getting right on me tits for a few years now. And I mean, right on me tits.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, regretting it immediately.

“No subtlety.” No subtlety, I scrawled on the notepad. “Crash, bang, bloody wallop! And as for coloured bloody clothes,” he continued, “don’t get me started on that.” But he had started on that...

Anyway, no sooner had I come to terms with the likelihood of having to endure an afternoon being sprayed with a fine mist of spittle, when Frank, aficionado of the timeless, mellifluous commentaries of Arlott and Cardus, became the first person I had ever heard advocate the mandatory black-and-white coverage of cricket on TV. What is it with these Badgers and black-and-white? “It’s all this colour that’s making kids go off the rails these days,” he groused. “Messes with ’ems’ heads. Like them E numbers.”

He was in fighting form, and wasn’t finished there. Far from it. No, his real bugbear with this new-fangled modern cricketing razzmatazz was the “stupid bloody names” given to teams in an effort to attract new spectators.

“Turd-polishing. I blame the Yanks. They can’t call a spade a bloody spade over there.”

While not enjoying the unsolicited phlegm-bath I received during the making of this point, I had to concede nonetheless that it was very valid and persuasive, this argument of Frank’s regarding the pernicious influence of American sport, its bravado, bluster, and bombast. I mean, look at the modest, almost humdrum sobriquets of our football teams: City, Town, County, United, Albion, Rovers, Wanderers, Athletic. “You could understand all that,” he opined. “Even fancy-dan names like Forest. Local pride. Understated. But then we started to copy everything the Yanks did, with their ‘super deluxe’ this and ‘mega razzle-dazzle’ that. And look what’s happened. Kids nowadays won’t eat a packet of sweets unless they’re called something like Fist or Skullsmashers. It’s not right.”

The more I thought about it, the clearer it all became: the names of American sports franchises did indeed all seem to connote force, strength, aggression, stealth, superiority, or overweening and aggressive pride in local identity, all promoting an obsession with victory (or at least not being “Losers”), a propensity for displays of strutting triumphalism, and an inevitable (and unhealthy) tribalism. An ugly brew.

In order to convey this virility and might, teams’ names appear to be drawn from the following broad categories:

Predatory Animals: Nashville Predators, San Jose Sharks, Seattle Seahawks, Charlotte Bobcats, Phoenix Coyotes, Florida Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Detroit Lions, Detroit Tigers, Memphis Grizzlies, Toronto Raptors, Minnesota Timberwolves;

Extreme Weather: Colorado Avalanche, Miami Heat, Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes, Oklahoma City Thunder;

Warrior Tribes: Minnesota Vikings, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves, Chicago Blackhawks;

Engineering Power/Speed: Houston Rockets, Detroit Pistons, New York Jets, Indianapolis Pacers, Philadelphia Flyers;

Professions of Authority/‘Masculinity’: Arizona Cardinals, Kansas City Chiefs, Sacramento Kings, Ottawa Senators; Edmonton Oilers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Portland Trailblazers;

Charismatic/Dangerous Outsider Figures: Pittsburgh Pirates, Oakland Raiders, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dallas Mavericks;

Mythology: Tennessee Titans, Washington Wizards, Orlando Magic, San Francisco Giants, New Jersey Devils;

Symbols of Local Identity/Patriotism: Philadelphia 76’ers, New York Yankees, Toronto Maple Leafs, Dallas Cowboys, Boston Celtics.

There are a few exceptions to this pill-popping, vein-bulging, parade of steroidal machismo. In the NHL, the denizens of Pittsburgh are able to waddle along to the stadium and offer support to the Penguins (who are not the only team named after a biscuit, either, since LA’s baseball team are known as the Dodgers). In the NFL, Buffalo’s franchise is named after unwanted post (the Bills) and Green Bay’s perhaps after menial factory labour (the Packers). In the NBA, one can even find a team named after a musical genre (Utah Jazz), which invites us to wonder where you could take that concept: the Denver Dubstep, Boston Bossanova, or San Diego Ska, perhaps?

If just a smidgeon of sobriety and honest self-appraisal were to penetrate this roll-call of delusional, bicep-kissing narcissism, then we’d doubtless have teams called the Minnesota Militia, Kentucky KKKlansmen, Cincinnati Strippers, and Albuquerque Abortionist Assassins. But it’s not about honesty. It’s about feeling and showing potency, about rock-like identity (perhaps, deep down, about the sort of tumescence that Frank and his muckers nowadays get only from Viagra).

Anyway, to Frank’s evident dismay, English cricket’s counties, in a lamentable effort to bring – or drag – the game to a new audience, have followed the American lead, re-branding themselves with such predictable labels as Sussex Sharks, Nottinghamshire Outlaws (combining local symbol and dangerous figure), Glamorgan Dragons, Lancashire Lightning and, er, Yorkshire Carnegie. In South Africa and Australia it’s the same (Bushrangers, Redbacks, Cobras, Warriors, etc), and now we have the psychedelic pebbledash of the IPL, an all-singing, all-dancing commercial circus that slavishly imitates the US style and thus “really gets on the tits” of Frank: “I don’t need to see a dancing semi-naked girl in order to appreciate a good out-swinger successfully defended to extra cover, much as I don’t need to be contemplating Ted Dexter’s cover-drive when I’m staring at a semi-naked lady. The two don’t mix.”

Now, it happens that a few weeks back, at a benefit dinner for Bob Taylor (“best in England? Not even the best ‘keeper come out o’ Potteries, lad”), Frank had the dubious pleasure of sitting next to Boyd D’Waffle, the marketing guru and genius self-promoter responsible for conjuring up the all-singing, all-Yankee-doodle-dancing county nicknames, and to whom Mr Wisdom expressed his tangible dissatisfaction using the trusted medium of stony silence. Desperately seeking an ice-breaker, D’Waffle confessed – with some degree of embarrassment, Frank noted – that it was also he who had “imagineered” – for a fee “north of $200,000” he said, with some degree of pride – the cumbersome, hackneyed, and unoriginal IPL nicknames: Chennai Super Kings, Bangalore Royal Challengers, Kings XI Punjab, Kolkata Knight Riders and, the undoubted zenith of his inspiration, Mumbai Indians.

Frank muttered a little, spluttered a bit, then, spotting an opportunity, sent Boyd a little nip-backer, asking him whether – given the charitable impulses he’d just spent 20 brazen minutes force-feeding his audience – he might see his way to helping devise a set of anti-glamour nicknames for the clubs of his beloved North Staffs and South Cheshire League, names that were honest, downbeat, matter-of-fact – names that dealt with the regulation weather of the British Isles; with the modern social types that people it, rather than its ancient tribes; with the kinds of vague post-industrial jobs that its citizens begrudgingly carry out; with animals that represent not so much ruthless killing but furry irritation; with domestic appliances rather than mighty feats of engineering (which have been beyond us since we outsourced everything except financial services); and with truthful symbols of local identity.

After a month’s consultation with Frank and his various NSSCL-watching brethren, this is Boyd D’Waffle’s final output, the adoption of which has been unanimously approved for the 2011 season’s Talbot Cup and T20 competitions by the League Executive (the mascots, logos and kit are being awaited with great interest…):

• Alsager Also-Rans 
• Ashcombe ASBOs 
• Audley Windfall 
• Bagnall Burglars 
• Barlaston Bhangra 
• Betley Bumpkins 
• Bignall End Badgers 
• Blythe Blue Tits 
• Burslem Benefit Fraudsters 
• Caverswall Cuckoos 
• Cheadle Chip-Eaters 
• Checkley Chaffinches 
• Crewe Trainspotters 
• Eccleshall Cakes 
• Elworth Eels 
• Endon Endogamy 
• Fenton Florists 
• Forsbrook Fluffers 
• Hanford Roundabouts 
• Hem Heath Ackers 
• Kidsgrove Kleptomaniacs 
• Knypersley Knuckleheads 
• Leek Freaks 
• Leycett Locals 
• Little Stoke Lollypop Ladies 
• Longton Louts 
• Meakins Mercenaries 
• Meir Heath Mardarses 
• Moddershall Mizzle 
• Newcastle & Hartshill Outpatients 
• Norton Nostalgia 
• Norton-in-Hales Smokers 
• Oakamoor Oiks 
• Oulton Overcast 
• Porthill Pissheads 
• Rode Park Roadsweepers 
• Sandyford Shelf-Stackers 
• Silverdale Scargills 
• Stafford Stiffs 
• Stone Toffs 
• Wedgwood & Stanfields Clay-Heads 
• Weston Weasels 
• Whitmore Wifebeaters 
• Wood Lane Window Cleaners 
• Woore Pacifists 
• Wootton Bassets 

The final word goes to Mr Wisdom (as if I had a choice in the matter), from his address to the League EGM upon the presentation of the new names: “Apologies if this has mildly offended anyone. Very sorry indeed. The intention had been to offend you a great deal. Now f**k off!” 

DISCLAIMER: The views contained in this article are not necessarily those of the blog’s owners.

Tweet

THE GREATEST CRICKET'R

The other day – and it was, literally, the other day (literally literally, not figuratively literally) – I got to thinking. And what, you’re probably wondering, did you get to thinking about? Well, I got to thinking about the apostrophe – to some a mere punctuation mark, to others the departure point for a whole book (cf. Lynne Truss’s [Truss’?] Eats, Shoots & Leaves).

an apostrophe

I was led to ponder the humble apostrophe not out of some fastidious grammarian’s rancour, à la Truss, but for the altogether more mundane reason that – the other day, as I say – a friend of mine (from Cornwall, since you ask) belched up the frankly OUTLANDISH proposition that the sometime Newcastle United goal-grabber Stephane Guivarc’h was, and I quote verbatim here, “the greatest apostrophied footballer of all time”. As you can imagine, I almost spat out my drink with scorn (we was down the boozer – where else for such an epochal chinwag?) and, suspecting more than a little Celtic bias toward his Breton cousin, rasped “that’s absolute fucking bollocks, Chief”.

No sooner had I started to reel off the alternatives – N’Gotty, N’Zogbia, D’Allessandro, Johnny van ’t Schip – than a pretty girl from the O.C. (Los Angeles), who’d been eavesdropping, chimed up: “Like, he-llo!! Er, Samuel Eto’o!? He’s, like, the greatest apostrophied sportsman EVER. Period”.

Maybe it was the tone of her voice or perhaps the cut of her jib, but I had an incontrovertible feeling deep in my considerable gut that she was bang on. (And right about Eto’o, too.) However, the Glaswegian sat opposite me, also eavesdropping, did not concur: “Git tae foak. Whoat aboot Brian O’Driscoll? Ronnie O’Sullivan? Shaquille O’Neal, ken?” And so the conversational wildfire spread… I, meanwhile, had retreated to the bar. It was my round. (Ken who?)

This is all well and good, you’re doubtless thinking, but what in heaven’s name does it have to do with cricket? This is a cricket blog, after all. Well, no sooner had this debate died down than Piran, my Cornish pard (having backtracked somewhat to claim only that Guivarc’h was the greatest apostrophied footballer to have appeared in the World Cup final), went on the offensive and, still rattled, said (and I’m having to choke back tears of rage as I write this): “what about your stupid bloody game, eh? Cricket!! That’s got to be the most apostrophically-challenged sport there is. Who’s the Number 1, the Top of the Apostrophies, in that ponce-fest?” His eyes were like saucers.

Murphy Su'a

I felt cornered (sadly, it wasn’t Dictionary Corner either) and, scanning along the bar in a desperate bid for inspiration, the best I could come up with in the face of this outrageous challenge to our beloved game was the former kiwi left-armer Murphy Su’a. Piran cackled in undisguised contempt. He had impugned the honour (and punctuational repute) of my sport – our sport – and I had been unable to defend it in its hour of need.

Now, I realized almost before the words fell apologetically from my lips that Murphy Su’a is not the greatest apostrophied cricketer of all time (although, he must surely enter the reckoning for the greatest cricketing apostrophe there's been) and that, in all likelihood, there were/are better examples I could have used to silence my gobby football-loving friend. But I went blank. So, I call upon you all to ponder this most vexing of questions: if Mr Su’a is not the greatest apostrophied cricketer ever, then who is?

Who’o?

PS: If we can get an XI together I could enter the team in the 2011 Punctuation Twenty20 Challenge to play the Hyphens, who this year are to be captained by Rory Hamilton-Brown. Fuckin’ Hyphens – they’re right up ’emselves. Mind you, with names like that...!!! 

Here is the Apostrophe XI that I picked.

Tweet

WHAT CAN 'THE BIG LEBOWSKI' TEACH US ABOUT CRICKET?

"Laundry, Dude. The Whites"

Walter Sobchak

Walter Sobchak is the kind of man who can get you a toe by 3 o’clock this afternoon. With nail polish. Walter Sobchak is knowledgeable. So, if Walter Sobchak is prepared to sacrifice his beloved cricket apparel – the whites – as the ringer in a ransom hand-off (albeit so that he can keep the baksheesh), then we, the audience, cannot fail to appreciate just how important the great game is to him (at least, I think those are the rules of ransom; I know you need a hostage, uh, and that the hostage cannot be an acquaintance of the kidnappers. Anyway, let’s not get bogged down in details…).

Of course, to the layman it’s not immediately obvious that the Coen brothers’ masterpiece, The Big Lebowski, is a film about cricket. Principally, this is because they had to conceal this aspect so as to avoid alienating an American audience almost completely ignorant of the sport, finer points or otherwise. No studio is going to fund a cricket movie, man: think about it. Nevertheless, the maverick filmmakers clearly know a thing or two about the gentleman’s game. Scratch beneath the shaggy-dog detective-noir pastiche and it’s patently one of the major themes of the film – I’d argue the central theme, no less. Indeed, any self-respecting Dudeist ought to be able to decipher this from what they already knew to be the movie’s key scene in terms of plot development: namely, when the nihilists break into the Dude’s private residence and one of them smashes his answering machine with what the screenplay refers to as a “cricket paddle”. That the Coens use this misnomer instead of the more recognized term – bat – is overwhelming, irrefutable proof that the phrase is acting as a shibboleth, a secret code designed to throw non-initiates off the scent.

So it is that the centrality of cricket to the film’s ethos has been overlooked by both critics and devotees alike. Until now. So, let’s have a glance at some of the movie’s many, many cricketing observations, starting with the most learned character’s thoughts… 

WALTER’S INSIGHTS:

(1) THE IMPORTANCE OF ADAPTING TO CONDITIONS 

Despite tending to deride combat on parched terrain (as with his scornful dismissal of the “bunch of fig-eaters with towels on their head trying to find reverse on a Soviet tank”), Walter is obviously something of an expert when it comes to playing spin on the ‘dustbowls’ of the Asian subcontinent. 

“I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand...” 

He realizes that the guard you take is crucial when batting on a worn, crumbling pitch. You have to be flexible, moving over to off stump to combat sharply spun off-breaks and left-arm wrist spin; or, conversely, batting outside leg stump against leg-spinners and slow left-arm orthodox to ensure that your pads are out of the line of the stumps (especially in the age of Hawk-Eye and the Decision Review System). 

Dude, meanwhile, is clearly struggling to pick the direction of the spin – be that the offie’s doosra or the leggie’s wrong’un – and is therefore of little help in the mid-pitch conference: “A lotta ins. A lotta outs. A lotta strands to keep in ol’ Duder’s head.” So, ignoring his compadre’s flustered inability to read the turn, Walter knows the best way to go against left-arm wrist-spin, what the dangers are… 

“The Chinaman is not the issue here Dude. I’m talking about unchecked aggression …” He understands that, for both left-arm wrist spin (‘Chinamen’) and slow bowling in general, the basic modus operandi must revolve around discipline and accumulation, fundamental pillars in the war of attrition against high-quality tweakers and twirlers. 

Walter also knows that, after a gruelling tour in Asia playing on dustbowls, there’s nothing like coming back to a good old fashioned ‘green-top’: “This was a valued rug.” (The square community would doubtless argue that preparing pitches to suit your own bowling attack is the work of “men who are unable to achieve on a level field of play: cowards, weaklings, bums,” but they can go fuck ‘emselves.) 

(2) AFFINITY FOR LIMITED-OVERS FORMATS  

Then there’s Walter’s understanding of modern ODI and Twenty20 cricket… 

“Over the line!!” 

You can’t be bowling no balls, especially not in the era of the free hit. Get your run-up sorted out.

“Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.” 

When you’re playing a league game, a game that determines who enters the next round-robin, there are certain things that have to be abided by. Frankly, the Dude, whilst applauded for his placid nature, is wrong to say “so his toe was over a little. Who gives a shit?” It’s a good job Walter’s there to give a shit about the rules, otherwise people would be bowling off 19 yards…

“The man in the black pyjamas, Dude. A worthy fuckin' adversary.”

More generally, Walter is clearly au fait with the international ODI cricket scene, too, and realizes that New Zealand, while much depleted of late, still possess dynamic players like McCullum, Guptill, Taylor, Ryder, Oram and Vettori, and are therefore very much a force to be reckoned with in the shorter forms of the game.

(3) TACTICS 

The field of military theory has long overlapped with cricket. For instance, prior to the 2005 Ashes, Australia’s coach, John Buchanan, gave his charges as reading material Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. Walter also learnt much from combat, principally concerning that old mantra of cricket coaches: Keep it simple. For, if there’s one thing he learnt in ‘Nam, it’s that “once a plan gets too complex, everything can go wrong…” Dude comes to realize this later, when his thinking about the whereabouts of Bunny and the money had become “a little uptight.”

(4) TECHNOLOGY 

Despite the recent introduction of DRS, Walter clearly possesses the attributes to become a top-flight umpire – with or without technological assistance – since he has the intuitive grasp of the game that’s needed to be able to read from the batsman’s body language when he has tickled one through to the ‘keeper: “this guy fucking walks. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

(5) BIOMECHANICS 

Walter could also help in the early diagnosis of the stress-fractured backs that have afflicted the game’s speedsters, since he has “seen a lot of Spinals.” 

(6) INTERNATIONAL CRICKETING POLITICS 

“We're scattering the Ashes” 

What Walter means here is that, where the MCC have previously been highly intransigent in their reluctance to allow any victorious Australian tourists to take the cherished urn home, he would adopt a (perhaps surprising) conciliatory position and accede to the demands of Cricket Australia, thus demonstrating his often overlooked statesmanlike qualities. However, before any formal handover he’d need to know whether there was a Ralph’s in the vicinity.

(7) PROFESSIONALISM vs. AMATEURISM 

Whilst a clear advocate of professionalism in the face of a bygone era of dilettante cricketers – “a bunch of fucking amateurs” – Walter nevertheless refuses to lose sight of the fact that it’s not life and death: 

Dude: “This isn't a fucking game, man”. 

Walter: “Oh but it is a game, you said so yourself”. 

I think it’s obvious from these many pearls of Sobchakian wisdom that leather-on-willow-mongers can learn much from the Big Pole/Jew. But what about his teammates and the other folk they encounter in our story? Well, they are less knowledgeable, sure, but they do have the odd thing to say…

DUDE’S INSIGHTS:

“I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man”

The Dude is clearly a fan of South African domestic cricket. Clearly. He may support any one of the Titans, Lions, Warriors, Cobras, or Dolphins (being a man of impeccable fairness, he probably supports them all), but he’s magnanimous enough not to let parochial issues get in the way of his support for the game’s heritage…

(1) PRESERVE THE GAME’S TRADITIONAL FORMAT 

“We held on! We held on! We...held...on!” 

In direct contradiction of the winners-and-losers philosophy of American sport, the Dude is every bit as excited by a hard-fought draw, which is the obvious interpretation to be made of his reaction to the hand-off. OK, they didn’t get the girl back, but neither did the nihilists “get the fuckin’ money”. Here’s a man who likes his Test cricket and is “not in to the whole brevity thing” of Twenty20. 

(2) ONLY SWING ONE WAY 

“Obviously you're not a golfer” 

On the one hand, the Dude is making a sarcastic point about Jackie Treehorn’s thug’s failure to recognize his bowling ball; on the other hand, in line with the clear thematic presence of cricket in the film, there’s also a “hidden message” here: batsmen, don’t play too much golf otherwise it will interfere with your technique.

THEODORE DONALD KERABATSOS AND THE GAME

This is not so much an insight as an admission of affinity for the game from the third member of the bowling team: “Donny who loved the outdoors. And bowling” was clearly someone who propelled what is known in the trade as a ‘heavy ball’, as unambiguously implied by his line: “I’m throwing rocks tonight. You guys are dead in the water.” 

JESUS QUINTANA’S INSIGHTS

Despite the more obvious connotations of his name, Jesus was one of the perspicacious reformists who realized that Test matches had to cast off their languid colonial rhythms – timeless Tests; having a day off in the middle of the game – and be played on 5 consecutive days, principally because Sunday was a non-working day for the paying public and could therefore increase revenue. This forward thinking was succinctly articulated when he made his landmark representation to cricket’s ruling body, the ICC: “What’s this ‘day of rest’ shit? What’s this bullshit? I don’t fuckin’ care. It don’t matter to Jesus.” 

He’s also not that keen on the ‘art’ of sledging, which he regards as “bush league psyche-out stuff. Laughable, man!”

*******

There are other gems of cricketing analysis that we don’t have time to go over (or invent) here, but suffice to say the true message of the film transcends cricket, and applies equally to all sports. I’m talking of course about the importance of equanimity in the face of victory and defeat, sentiments expressed in the oft-cited lines of Rudyard Kipling: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same”. The Stranger sums it up pithily: “sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar, wal, he eats you.” 

So, cricket’s a game of “strikes and gutters”, but, win or lose, you’ve just got to have a good sarsaparilla or a couple of “oat sodas” after the game and take it easy, man.

It’s just a game, man.

* A version of this piece was published in The Dudespaper but the lazy f**kers didn't edit it properly. 

Tweet