Sport

What's wrong with Test cricket

Roy Hattersley

The England team which was beaten so convincingly by the West Indies at Lord's remains very nearly the best eleven that the selectors could possibly choose. Illingworth has already gone. Luckhurst will almost certainly follow him. But eight or nine of the side will play at Port of Spain in the first Test of the Caribbean tour, universally accepted as the flower of English county cricket. So we could be suffering one of those cyclical spasms which have always afflicted the game. After all, in 1948, a team including Hutton, Compton, Bedser and Evans was bowled out for 52 at the Oval and conceded 404 runs during the fourth innings on a turning wicket at Lees. If that is so, all we have to is wait until Randall and Johnson mature, Sobers and Kanhai finally grow old and the Chappell brothers do the customary decent Australian thing and retire in their prime.

That is the optimistic judgement on English Test cricket. A second alternative which is at least as plausible, is that the game is in endemic decline. If that is so it will be the major irony of its history. The ancients of the MCC, so long reviled for their innate conservatism, will have innovated the quality out of first class cricket. Faced with the necessity to raise extra cash and attract bigger crowds, they hit on a deeply damaging solution to their immediate problem. They decided that first class cricketers should play village cricket every Sunday afternoon and on as many other summer days as industry would sponsor and the BBC televise,

By far the most pernicious of all the limited-over competitions is the John Player League. With each innings limited to a maxi

mum of forty avers the game is transformed. Taking wickets becomes less important than keeping the run rate down." Fast bowlers are prevented by the rules from taking their usual run-up and slips have become an unnecessary luxury. Batsmen play shots which commentators coyly describe as " not in the book." As part of the new vocabulary, backing away outside the leg stump (a practice which would have driven an earlier generation of coaches hysterical with despair) is now described as "making room to play the ball."

Since money is involved, underpaid professional cricketers naturally take the tournament seriously. Even so, if the scramble for runs were simply confined to Sunday afternoons the process of weekly adjustment from hit-and-run to proper cricket might be possible. But there are two other limited(albeit not quite so limited-) over competitions and the urge to amuse the paying public has even infected the County Championship.

Once upon a time the championship was won by winning matches and augmenting the points thus acquired by leading on the first innings. Now we have a system of bonus points awarded according to the number of wickets taken early in the first innings and the number of runs scored before the eightyfifth over. John Arlott has explained how, in theory, at any rate. the championship can be, won on bonus points alone. Kent have demonstrated how it can almost be done in practice.

The bonus points system was contrived to keep the runs flowing freely at about five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. The penalty that most middle-order batsmen pay for that

crowd pulling ingenuity is the constant In' struction to go for the runs." Limited-m' cricket has rendered them schizophrenic, ally cut down the number of days spent plaYing the proper game. The proper game now ha! a carefully calculated penalty to be paid by sides whose middle order batsmen carefullY establish themselves in the intention of plaY' ing a long innings. No wonder that after th,,,e English opening pair have gone, there is eau Keith Fletcher on whom we can rely. Of course, every one of the West Indiors who humiliated us at Lord's had passed the previous summer playing the limited-over! game. But no one argues that a couple a, seasons spent slogging out on Sunday after' noons or pursuing the contrived advantages of bonus points permanently damages established cricketer. The permanent damage is done to the young cricketer who must de"., velop his game in that atmosphere. The alu pro is only thrown off balance during the ac' tual season of mixed competition. Boyce, Julien and Holder bowled in Tesl, matches as they had never bowled for the counties. In part that must have been becaus,e they had spent almost a whole season bow' ing off their proper mark, to two slips, a gollY' a backward short leg and third man up te save the one — a whole season actually de' voted to taking wickets and winning 01. ches! On the other side Geoffrey Boycott , the only authentic giant in English Tes,lt cricket — gave his wicket away in every Tes, innings. Years of prodigious success but on inflexible determination have been over' come by the spirit of show-biz that radiales from the Long Room. He smiles, he jok,est with the crowd, 'he hooks and he gets cauga on the boundary. At least Boycott's Yorkshire colleagues ce not have to contend with the other grounfe

filling innovation of county cricket.

specially registered overseas player. UA course, Proctor, Lloyd, Turner, Richards all't Gibbs have brought an enormous addition °' talent to the game. Their continued doM10' tion of Edgbaston and Old Trafford is Pre.,, bably irresistible. But it must be as damagir4; to aspiring native talent as was the foreig invasion of Italian football. In the final of the Gillette Cup, Gloucester' ihire's four batsmen included two Pakistahlsi nd a South African. Sussex's slim hope overcoming what the South African achieve° depended on the performance of a West lls;

dian. That may be good for county cricke`'

but it is certainly no good for county cricket' ers. If you ask proof, enquire of John Jarnes' on. Last August he could not command;ed

place in the Warwickshire side that played,„”; the Gillette Final — room had to be found t°'

Kanhai, Kallicharran and Murray. This Ye3t,'5 with the three West Indians in their countrY,_ touring team, Jameson has been assured al regular place. As a consequence he is in til` England party to tour the West Indies.

All of which is the worst of heresy — denial of new orthodoxy. When Brian CIO' was excommunicated by Yorkshire for sills it' not against the Holy Ghost then agaifP, Brian Sellars (which is a much more sericals5 crime) — one of the charges was that he ‘415,

against limited-over cricket. Close was not,„'; stolid opening batsman or a stock bosvi`;

who needed three days of unimaginative er fort. He was one of the most exciting crickF,t,: ers of his time. His shortcoming was the Wh.',1 ingness to dare too much rather than to avah't the cricketers' gamble. But he realised tO for all its genuinely welcome flag-waving en thusiasm one-day cricket was bound t' change the character of the county gas. There is a very strong probablity that he v•Ife proved right during the third Test against West Indies at Lord's.

Roy Hattersiey is Labour MP for Birrninghqn] (Sparkbrook) and a member of Yorks/Hi'