SPECTATOR SPORT
Recorded deliveries
Frank Keating
IT WAS apt that the appealing (in every way) and self-deprecating trundler, Simon Hughes, should take the last two wickets to wrap up a deserved County Championship title for Middlesex after cricket's most extraordinary season in memory. One afternoon, after a battering spell of bound- aries and midsummer sun, Simon finished his six penn'orth, turned to the umpire and enquired with resignation, `Owazeer What for, lad? 'Law 42, intimidatory batting', said Hughes, taking his cap.
Burnished, ochre pitches in a relentless heat wave had to be bowled on by the new regulation, almost seamless, ball. County bowlers hitherto had been used to arrow- ing in at medium pace a 15-thread ball with humped stitching which would 'seam' hither and yon if it hit the deck right. The 1990 English season rudely sorted out the men from the boys with the ball — and most half-decent batsmen found them- selves having a birthday two or three times a week. The bats gloated, bloated and stuffed themselves. For once, this week's end-of-term averages tell the full story of an all-time record slugfest, with 427 first- class centuries, three triple centuries, and 25 200s. In 1989, another long hot summer but with the ball allowed to be stitched almost with piano wire, only six men made double centuries.
Last season only one batsman, Cook of Somerset, averaged over 60 runs an in- nings. This summer 23 averaged over 60, seven were in the 70s, one (Moody of Warwickshire) in the 80s; Hick of Worces- tershire averaged 90.26, and Gooch, cap- tain of Essex and England, 101.70. In 1989, a dozen bowlers averaged fewer than 20 runs a wicket; this year only two, the West Indians of Derbyshire and Hampshire, Bishop and the incomparable Marshall.
In a fascinating delve in the Correspon- dent on Sunday, that singular swot, Nor- man Harris, took a computer to the tables and came up with such insights as Curtis, Worcester's opener, being dismissed lbw 14 times out of 30 in the Championship, while Essex's Stephenson was not leg- before once in 32 innings; or how Surrey's new hot rod, Waqar Younis, clean bowled 29 of his 57 victims, but DeFreitas of Lancashire never disturbed the stumps once for his 33 wickets. Harris's screen also showed how the two Middlesex craftsmen, Emburey and Fraser, were far and away the meanest and most accurate in such a summer as this, each giving away just over two runs an over.
Emburey was one of the few of those who having toured South Africa in the winter on Mike Gatting's misbegotten adventure did not suffer a reaction. The notable exception to this was Foster, of Essex, whose 94 wickets showed how skill can triumph over seamlessness, though his fellow journeyman to the land of the rand, Dilley, Thomas, and Jarvis, managed only 90 wickets between them when, last year, they had taken 203. Nor did Gatting himself cash in on the batsman's summer as one might have expected — way down the averages at 56.80, just a run per inning more than in 1989, although better by far than most of his South African tourists, of whom Wells (from 9th to 90th in the batting list), Cowdrey (36th to 102nd), and Robinson (29th to 88th) were the most notable shoulder-shruggers in the face of their five-year ban from playing for Eng- land again.
Conversely, it seems Wayne Larkins and Alec Stewart cannot get out of the England side, however hard they try. They both go to Australia, although Larkins was 180th in the batting averages (2 100s, 2 50s) while his rival, Hugh Morris of Glamorgan, hit 10 100s and 10 50s and stays at home. Stewart was 92nd with one century and 24 catches, while his rival as reserve stumper for Surrey, the toothy George Formby double, David Ward, averaged 76, with seven 100s and 32 catches. When it comes to playing for England, if your face fits, so does the cap.
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