TALE OF WIND AND WILLOW MAY CHEER UP POOR JASON
When the Florida police released that video of Tiger Woods failing a ‘sobriety’ test, it was hard to imagine that you’d ever again see a high-profile sportsman in such an advanced state of discombobulation.
In the event, however, it turned out to be less than a fortnight, when Sky TV released live footage of Jason Roy’s lbw in England’s Champions Trophy game against Australia at Edgbaston.
When the ball from Mitchell Starc thudded into Roy’s pads, a combination of being hopelessly unbalanced, not knowing where the ball had gone, and attempting to avoid all eye contact with the umpire, led to the kind of disorientation you last saw at one of those kiddies’ birthday parties. Where the victim is blindfolded, spun around half a dozen times, and then invited to try and tag someone before falling over.
The England captain, Eoin Morgan, intimated before the competition that Roy would remain in situ at the top of the order come what may, but the decision to drop him for the semi-final was ultimately an act of kindness. Like taking an ailing family pet to the vet.
It’s one of the great mysteries of sport. When someone who’s reached the height of his or her profession suddenly loses the plot. The golfer who disintegrates in a flurry of duffs and shanks. The darts player who suddenly finds that instead of hitting the treble 20 he’s now taking great chunks of plaster out of the wall. And the batting run-machine who now starts missing straight balls, and requires a sat-nav to locate the whereabouts of his off-stump.
It happens, at some time or other, to nearly everyone, and is no respecter of reputations. One of the great England openers, Graham Gooch, spent most of the summer of 1989 getting out lbw to Terry Alderman, and was at least able to engage the safety valve of dry wit when he kept reading about his flaky technique in the morning newspapers.
Encountering a group of journalists on his way to the nets before the final Test at the Oval, Gooch quipped: “Morning chaps. I’m just off to practise my falling-over shot.”
The following summer, he was taking 333 and 105 off the Indian attack in the course of a single Test match, and the same kind of thing happened to the batsman he mentored at Essex, Alastair Cook.
In 2010 against Pakistan at the Oval, Cook was so desperate for runs there was talk of him being left out of the Ashes tour to Australia that winter, and things looked bleak when he was out for six in the first innings. Then in the second innings he got away with three edges through the slips, went on to make a century, and that winter was man of the series with 766 runs at an average of 127.66 and a top score of 235 not out.
For the batsman in a trough, though, it’s hard to ever see a way out. On a day when the opposition bowling attack comes up with a single jaffa in an otherwise assortment of dross, guess who’s the one who’s on the end of it? Or, after half an hour of nervous poking and prodding, he suddenly gets one right off the sweet spot, and watches cover point pluck the ball from the air with the catch of the century. Or, in the case of Leicestershire opener John Steele back in the Eighties, you find ways of getting out you never thought possible.
Steele was in a terrible trot when Kent visited Grace Road with such an injury crisis in their bowling resources that the new ball was taken by someone – David Sayer – who’d not only come out of retirement to help out, but who’d last sent down a first-class delivery eight years earlier. You could almost hear the muscles groaning in protest as Sayer trundled into bowl, and when he managed to get his third delivery on target, it uprooted Steele’s middle-stump.
Second time around, Leicestershire batted again requiring four runs to win with one over to bowl before lunch, and Kent’s captain Mike Denness, eager for an early getaway down the motorway, and without a firstclass wicket for 14 years, brought himself on with his very occasional flighted filth. He lobbed one up invitingly, and Steele lunged forward to block it. As he did to the next four balls. Finally, Denness dispensed with a run-up, delivered a slow, floating full toss, and Steele hit it straight to the fielder at mid-on. Whose instinct prompted him to catch it, instead of, as the other 10 Kent players would have preferred, allowing it to go past him to the boundary. The Jason Roy syndrome happens at all levels of the game, and one of the sadder cases involved another opening batsman – his name was Jimmy – in a Sunday afternoon club match I was playing in many years ago. He hadn’t got a run all summer, and, having retained his place for longer than would have been the case had his girlfriend’s mother not organised the teas, was finally in the last-chance saloon. After about half an hour, with our man having scratched his way to a tortured five singles, the opposition turned to spin, and the first ball loosener was the longest long hop in the entire history of long hops. However, it did at least have the virtue of being a straight one, and just as Jimmy wound himself up for the boundary that might have ignited his season, the wicketkeeper – involuntarily he later claimed – broke wind. This was no ordinary attack of flatulence, but an eruption on the Krakatoa scale of earthquake, and Jimmy was sufficiently startled to miss the ball completely. He turned round to observe his middle-stump leaning back, and turned back again to plead with the umpire to rule on a dead ball. Sadly for him, however, the umpire, along with the 11 fielders and the non-striking batsman, was on the ground clutching his ribs. It’s a rare event for the bloke that’s struggling to see the funny side of things, as Greg Chappell did when he was having a bad run. “I’m not out of form, I just keep getting out,” said Greg. And when you’re not sure where your next run is coming from, it must be some small consolation to know that it can happen to the very best. Bradman, shame on him, once went 26 innings without making a double century.
It’s one of the great mysteries of sport when someone who’s reached the height of his or her profession suddenly loses the plot