SPECTATOR SPORT
Captaincy traumas
Frank Keating
NAME ME a successful captain of cricket who has not had a couple of decent bowlers to call on. There simply has not been one. At Headingley you could have wept buckets for ,Graham Gooch as he traipsed in a brown study between mid-on and mid-off, Pondering whether to do the decent thing. Alongside him, tedious turn and turn about, England's four tyro trundlers ran in to spoonfeed Australians with dollies, for over after over with the relentlessness of the tide against a sea-wall.
By the time you reach this corner we will know which mug has picked up the pun- gent-smelling chalice. He will, of course, also be without a bowling attack. There is a strong case for blooding a whole new team with him: the old guard have simply become used to losing. Stewart, pragmatic modern 'midfield man' and worker-ant pro, is fancied. But his dad would have to 'leave the room', and the gloves be given to Metson or Russell. Gatting would be retrograde for all sorts of reasons. Morris, of Glamorgan, good guy, happy outlook, fresh approach, and ditto Atherton. Hope it has turned out to be either of the last two, but doubt it.
England's captaincy traumas come round more regularly than general elections. Gooch was in on quite a few, as a footslog- ger quietly observing all the officers' palaver from his corner. Why, after Gooch's very first Test match 18 years ago (can it really be?), the selectors' firing- squad marched Denness round the back of the Edgbaston pay and did the deed.
That took just one bullet and was pretty clean, but usually, when the time has come (like Tory party changes of leadership), it has been a fairly dirty business.
Greig succeeded Denness. Brearley suc- ceeded Greig when the South African joined the perceived enemy, Mr Packer. Brearley also steadied the ship after Both- am's brief regency met a messy end. Then the double-crossing Lord's king-makers stabbed Gower and Gatting in the back (each more than once), treated Cowdrey with shoddy disdain, and finally gave Gooch the job with the utmost reluctance because there was nobody else. 'No moral fibre' was the insinuation about Gooch, who was appointed less than a year after the chairman of selectors, Dexter, had scoffed in the public prints that his captain- to-be had 'all the personality of a wet fish'.
For all that, it might be much simpler if we went back to the old boy network and Nicholas of Hants. The last time England suffered seven consecutive defeats was in 1921 under the leadership of JWHT (`John- ny Won't Hit Today') Douglas, another Essex man. Desperate measures are called for — and as Lionel, Lord Tennyson, also of Hampshire, noted in his log:
On the eve of the Test I was sitting with some friends in the 'Embassy Club' in Bond Street, smoking my second cigar. To my amazement, towards one o'clock in the morning, just as I was thinking of bed, a telephone message reached me from the Test selectors to be at Lord's next morning for the opening of the game. I replied that I was deeply grateful of the honour — but had they informed me of their intentions a bit earlier I should have knocked off a cigar or two.
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