SPECTATOR SPORT
The glad animal action
Frank Keating
IT WAS a momentous Test match, and in a way you could understand what (while missing the fundamental point entirely) the BBC clot was trying to do on Saturday evening when he gave orders to reprise the astonishing day by showing again each of Devon Malcolm's nine second innings wick- ets in slow motion. But the whole point was that no England Test bowler can ever have sustained such venomous and uncomplicat- ed pure speed in a home match — or not since Frank Tyson was let out of his cage for the first time (as rehearsal, too, for an Australian winter) on this same Kenning- ton paddock exactly 40 years before.
Tyson was a schoolteacher and more vividly articulate in describing the grandeur of his gale than the nicely reticent Malcolm. But what Tyson had said that day at the Oval in 1954, I thought on Saturday night, would serve precisely for Malcolm — 'To bowl quick is to revel in the glad animal action, to thrill in physical prowess, and to enjoy a certain feeling of superiority over other mortals who play the game. No bats- man likes really quick bowling, a knowledge that can crown you with omnipotence.'
The South African batsmen — whose gritty diligence had been a feature of the series — looked tremulously out of their depth as Malcolm ripped in. Where had Malcolm been all summer, asked the so- long beleaguered England cricket support- ers round the country as, to a man, they thought of that defiant little chap in Dad's Army brandishing his bayonet and insisting that Jerry 'don't like it up 'em, sir'.
What an immense service, too, had Mal- colm done to divert the headlines from his captain, Michael Atherton. Late on Friday evening at the Oval, the immediate gut feel- ing in the press-box was that the England captain would seriously be considering his position for the second time in weeks after being fined heavily and 'severely reprimand- ed' by the Australian match referee, Peter Burge, for 'dissent' — staring at his bat and shaking his head — after being given out lbw. Then we reconsidered: the fleeting gesture was as routinely understandable as it was innocuous. It was not dissent. Atherton had 'walked' without hesitation, and the umpires had not complained. Was this new-fangled match referee over-reacting? Or embarking on a vindictive carry-on after the unsettled 'dust' of Lord's? I had been due to dine on Friday night with Mike, but presumed the hoo-ha would have him skip the date, hosted by the editor of Wisden Monthly,David Frith, at Green's in Duke Street. Atherton had spirited him- self away from the Oval, and when I arrived late at the restaurant the knot of news-desk door-steppers were banging on the door. 'When is he coming?' they yahooed me. But downstairs in the private dining-room, with two former England captains firm at his side, there was Mike already, smiling in his England blazer and in tremendously good form too, considering.
It was a delightful evening. You need steely resolution at 26, I'm telling you, as much to open Test match batting as ride out its attendant shenanigans. We did our best to relieve those: Bob Willis was at his appealingly Rabelaisian best while David Gower (nicely thwarted by the frugal Frith, who had ordered beforehand, from taking charge of the wine-list) decided my rustic palate needed introduction to the smooth delights of kfimmel on the rocks. By my eighth — eight more runs than Mike had scored that morning — we were toasting the young captain for a famous morrow (not aware quite how famous it would be), and he left for bed, via the kitchens and the back door, leaving the press door-steppers, now dozing, at the front. It was a piquant night for a poacher.
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