Treasure trove under stairs
Wisden Almanack fuels one man’s passion for cricket
I WAS particularly taken with a recent comment of Jurgen Klopp, the Liverpool football manager, when he said that football was the most important of the least important things.
It’s sport and sport only and I don’t need to remind readers of the darkness of these and future days and of the invisible threat of Covid-19.
It affects all of us in the most profound ways, and a particular keenly felt absence has been the complete loss of sport, be it played out live, televised, or reported on the radio.
Not far from where I live, the grounds of Camolin Celtic A.F.C. lie sadly unused and the same goes for the facilities of our rugby, G.A.A. and hockey clubs.
But this time of this particular year is really tough for the Wexford cricket fraternity. Members of Wexford C.C. and Gorey C.C. must have their heads in their hands.
Making league fixtures with other clubs is, as Eamon De Valera would have said, like eating soup with a fork, but it’s the dashing of hope that really hurts.
At the start of every summer a cricketer always thinks, ‘it’s going to be this year’, but there’s a dark shadow over the type of cricket season Wexford clubs will have this year, if any.
Cricket itself is on the up in Ireland, and our national 32 county side are performing at the top international level of the game. People are put off by the game’s quirks and complications but, in truth, it’s a numbers game – whichever side scores most runs wins.
It’s an eleven-a-side game and, to use a rugby analogy, the batsmen are akin to the fancy dan backs while the bowlers see themselves as the hod carriers, much like their grizzled rugby forward counterparts.
On the surface it looks a genteel game, but the prospect of facing a hard lump of cork wrapped in leather can change your view of that.
In some cases matches, especially at junior level, are played on synthetic pitches, but the bulk of games are played on grass wickets. Think of the centre court in Wimbledon after a number one shave and you get the picture.
It’s my view that some day Wexford will some day be a cricket powerhouse. For one thing the weather is always appreciably better than it is in the rest of the country, and that helps in producing fast outfields and the best and fairest grass pitches.
Cricket requires hand to eye co-ordination, and Wexford sportsmen and women in all codes have demonstrated these skills.
On that point, the parents of the Rackard brothers were keen that they played cricket, and I gather that they might have played the summer game under aliases for different Wexford club sides.
Finally, cricket is the most family orientated of games, and Wexford families have always loved their sport.
There’s cricket history in this county. Cricket has, of course, the reputation of being the Big House ascendancy game and, as it happened, my much-loved and sadly departed father-in-law worked on the ground and sometimes played up there in Wells House.
I first played in Wexford in 1988, when my club, Civil Service, based up in Phoenix Park in Dublin, went on a pre N11 tour of the sunny south-east.
We played in Kilrane on the Saturday, and we then played Wexford C.C. on the
Sunday. An away win in Kilrane and a ‘1’ on the pools coupon on Sunday.
Both matches were played hard and fair and were subject to long and intensive scrutiny over post-match pints. I gather too that Camolin itself had a fine club, and I hope to talk to my neighbours about that club and its deeds.
I’ve stopped playing a long time now, but memories of those Wexford days and other cricketing days sustain me.
I had something else to look forward to during the initial stages of lockdown in early April – it’s at that time every year that cricketers await the publication of the Wisden Cricket Almanack.
To put it in context, around the same time last year, we were thinking of moving to Wexford. It was a big step but the right step.
We looked at three places – the first was a maybe but fell off the page, the second was a bungalow and we’ve never lived without an upstairs, but the third place was the real deal. It was, and is, a nice home with a warm homely vibe.
The estate agent showed us around and my wife, as is right and proper, was all talk about curtain patterns and kitchen islands. All I was worried about was where I could keep my collection of Wisdens.
And it was on the second viewing that I spotted and booked a little spot under the stairs where I could line them up. I couldn’t wait to sign the dotted line.
The day we actually moved was an absolute mare. Sheets of freezing October rain, heavy grey skies, and we were also royally stitched up by the removal people.
Despite all assurances, they simply turfed all our possessions into one of our front rooms and cleared off. But the following day the sun shone and later that evening I crawled through the wreckage and found every edition of the Almanack.
I lined them up in date order in the bookshelf under the stairs and thought, ‘now I’m home’.
Wisden has been published every year since 1863 and it is the uncontested source of information on the great game. It has outlined how the game has developed and changed and it reports on all major cricket matches.
Jim Swanton was a famous cricket writer and a renowned snob, but he said of his own writing method: ‘First, briefly, the basic facts - what happened. Next, a critical view - why it happened.’
Wisden has followed these simple principles for over 150 years and its structure has changed very little since its establishment. I do not think there is a comparable type of publication in any other sport, certainly not in terms of longevity.
The Almanack structure follows a tried and trusted path. First, there are the editor’s notes, a kind of cricketing Sermon from the Mount.
Then there are the five cricketers of the year, based on individual performances over the previous twelve months. (In a wringing of hands moment in 2011, there were only four cricketers named for this accolade, a sharp comment on match fixing palavers the previous year).
Roughly speaking, this is then followed by reports on the previous year’s fixtures, obituaries, and a copy of the game’s laws as they then apply.
It was in July of 1978 that I got my hands on my first Wisden – my mother brought me into Eason’s in O’Connell Street, asked my auntie Hilda, then on the till, for a copy of the book at mates rates, and there it was, the yellow-covered bible.
I was lucky with my first one, as it covered the Ashes series in 1977 - Ashes series take place between England and Australia, the peak of the game.
The five cricketers of the year were excellent – Botham, Willis, Hendrick, Alan Jones and Ken McEwan. None of these names will mean much down Wexford way, but these players’ picture portraits matched their words of tribute.
Botham, the great, and often notorious, all-rounder in his bowling follow through. Willis, a giraffe-like fast bowler, steely-eyed, his body a series of conflicting angles as he gathered to bowl.
Hendrick was the embodiment of English and fast medium, anything that left his hand landed on the seam - if you can regularly land a cricket ball on the seam, or stitching, you’ll put your children through college on the strength of it.
Ken McEwan was a South African who made a bucket of runs for Essex, was pictured driving the ball, and he may well have had a wisp of straw between his teeth. Alan Jones, the great Glamorgan opening batsman, wore a daffodil the size of his heart on his cricket jumper.
The 1977 edition also featured comment on the fall-out of Packer cricket, a huge deal at the time, and a few extras.
Richie Benaud, the great Australian cricketer and commentator, wrote about how and when to play the hook shot, the riskiest shot in the game.
He didn’t actually outline how or when but it was a fine piece of writing, as well as three portraits of old ‘20s and ‘30s cricketers by Basil Easterbrook – William Astill, Maurice Turnbull, and Jack White. Lovely pieces of writing, and of course the cadence of cricket lends itself to great literature.
It was the bits and bobs articles contained in each Wisden that really intrigued me. In many instances they supplemented each year’s obituaries.
In the 1979 edition there were lovely pieces on the passing of two greats of the past, Herbert Sutcliffe and Frank Wooley, and a few years later Mike Brearley, England captain and a man with, as someone said, a degree in people, wrote a beautiful melancholic piece about the passing of John Arlott, a great and poetic cricket commentator, and for many the voice of summer. The words were so wistful, you could almost hear Nick Drake playing in the background.
Michael Atherton too wrote well about the great bowlers, Courtney Walsh and Shane Warne, on their retirement, but one of my favourite pieces was put together by the great Aussie wicket keeper Ian Healy on his successor, Adam Gilchrist.
I cannot remember a better analysis of wicket keeping and match preparation. It was a fantastic piece of technical writing, but Healy lightened the tone when he said that in a social setting Gilchrist was a ‘none or a gutful man’.
The Almanack came to mean so much more to me when I began playing. My highest score was 44, and I more or less had to be carried from the Civil Service C.C. wicket in an oxygen tent.
Previously a hundred was a statistic but now I really began to understand the hard work that went into making big scores or bowling long spells. And as I watched the big matches too, I began to wonder also what Wisden might say the following spring when it reported.
Mike Gatting was batting beautifully in the 1987 World Cup final when he basically gave it away, playing an awful reverse sweep to a nothing ball bowled by Allan Border. A real head in the hands moment and it lost them the final, but Wisden simply sighed, ‘a moment too crass to contemplate’.
For that reason I was really looking forward to the 2020 Almanack and in particular its report on Ireland’s Test match against the Saxon foe last July.
It ended in tears, as we probably all knew it would, but on that first day, looking at our lads making us proud, I had some idea how the Beatles must have felt when they went to Buckingham Palace to received their gongs.
When I started reading my first Wisden, I used to giggle at my parents when the Evening Herald arrived each day. They almost always went straight to the obituaries, and it’s a sign of the times that when I get an edition the obits are my first port of call.
The obits have changed with the times – formerly they focused on players’ technical foibles and flaws, and oftentimes the writing was earnest but dry.
The Almanack has moved with the times, with the result that a more rounded picture emerges of the person that passed on. The John Sullivan obituary in 2007 is a case in point.
He was already bibulous but in retirement he bought a pub that proved to be his downfall. ‘Tragically, he always preferred buying to selling and his decline was long, inexorable, and in the end, heartbreaking.’
There’s a lovely line too about Martha Kearns, the Mullingar tea lady at Lords, the home of cricket. Mike Brearley complained about the size of portions given to his players at lunch, to which she responded, ‘how about I don’t tell you how to feckin bat and you won’t feckin tell me how to cook’.
In another era the report of Jim Swanton’s demise would have been completely uncritical, but when he did pass they recalled England skipper Ray Illingworth’s acid line that ‘Jim Swanton was so posh he would not get into the same car as his chauffeur’.
But the best piece of cricket writing that I can recall in Wisden or anywhere else is the obituary on Colin Cowdrey in 2001. He was always an heroic figure, but the obituary lays out the tensions behind the Patrician mask. It’s a remarkably rounded portrait of a man that, despite all the effortlessness, struggled.
And to finish, for the literary buffs among you, in an Irish context the best Wisden obituary is set out in the 1990 Almanack and is the basis for a pub quiz question – who is the only first class cricketer to receive a Nobel prize for literature? Trinity’s own Samuel Beckett.
Samuel Beckett was a left-handed opening batsman with what he himself called a ‘gritty defence’. In a parallel heaven I can imagine that the Wisden obituary meant as much to him as the Nobel Peace Prize, and that that great craggy Mount Rushmore face of his must have smiled when he read it.
So it came to that happy time again in April. In previous years I would have trotted down to Hannah’s bookshop every lunchtime to see if the Almanack was in.
This is my first year making a home in Wexford, and it was delivered to my door by Mary, our friendly postwoman. It was worth the wait.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Anthony Morrissey - a passionate cricket enthusiast as the above piece outlines - is a recent arrival to Camolin, with his treasured collection of Wisdens in tow.