Martin Johnson

Fighting the cause for the larger characters in life

You don’t often see a cricketer being chaired off the field in triumph by his jubilant team mates – Ray Illingworth is one of very few who springs to mind after England won the Ashes in 1970-71 – and the recent architect of the highest successful run chase in English domestic cricket was obliged to make it back to the pavilion under his own steam.

Not that Samit Patel’s colleagues weren’t pleased with him after his unbeaten 122 at Chelmsford helped Nottinghamshire overtake Essex’s apparently unreachable 370 in their the Royal London Cup semi-final.

It was simply that – in the absence of a forklift truck in the groundsman’s shed – there was absolutely no chance of lifting him.

Cricket, for all its accent nowadays on diet sheets, gym workouts, and lightning fast fielding, is unusual in being one of those sports – unlike darts and snooker for example – which can accommodate less than sylph like figures while still demanding that its participants have to run around a bit. Or even a lot.

Patel, for example, would have to be careful about taking a dip in the ocean when he’s on his holidays – at least without the protection of an escort vessel from Greenpeace – for fear of being harpooned.

But by heck he can play, as indeed could many others in cricket’s long history who looked as though their dietary requirements didn’t stretch much beyond chips, pies and ice cream.

Labelled “unfit, fat and lazy” by Kevin Pietersen after being sent home from England’s tour to the West Indies in 2009, Patel has always found it tougher to knock off pounds and kilos than runs. And while KP can at least see both sides of himself when he stands in front of a mirror – something you suspect he does quite a lot – you clearly don’t have to look like a pipe cleaner to make a successful career out of cricket.

Take someone like Colin Cowdrey, who didn’t look as though he missed many meals, but he’s right up there as one of England’s best ever batsman. Okay, he didn’t prowl around at cover point, throwing down the stumps when anyone was cheeky enough to try and pinch a quick single against him, but not much got away from him at first slip.

Or indeed, given that he was almost wide enough to cover more than one position, second slip.

You wouldn’t quite place Mike Gatting in the same illustrious company, but you don’t play 79 Test matches without being pretty good, and he deserves even more credit for occasionally batting for so long that he went two whole hours between meal times.

When most batsmen wave to the dressing room on a hot day it would usually be for a fresh pair of gloves, but on the Middlesex balcony in the Seventies and Eighties, confusion would have reigned. “Eh up twelthers,” someone might have said. “Look lively. I think Gatt wants you to run out with a cheese and pickle sandwich.”

A journalist colleague once took Gatt out for dinner during the 1987 World Cup in India and Pakistan, and wasn’t the least bit surprised when he ordered the “Chateaubriand for two” for one.

And when a very large cheese went missing from a sponsored Tesco tuck box during the same tournament, the team didn’t waste too much time trying to work out whose room it had ended up in.

It was Gatt’s good fortune to play for Middlesex at a time when the catering was the province of Nancy Doyle, who, despite not being an especially religious lady, looked upon lunch breaks as an exercise in feeding the five thousand. Although, and here’s the irony, there weren’t many of Gatt’s contemporaries who could match him in a game of squash, and his footwork made him a highly accomplished player against spin.

Albeit not, of course, when he first encountered Shane Warne at Old Trafford in 1993, who became the first and only spinner in the history of the game to turn a ball from one side of Gatting to the other.

However, Warne himself spent most of his career on the wrong side of chubby, and you’d have to say that he didn’t do too badly as a Test match bowler.

Neither did a man who captained Warne in many of his Test matches, Mark Taylor, affectionately known as Tub. That Australian fast bowler with the small koala bear stuck to his top lip had a decent career as well, and when Merv was running in to bowl, the batsman became aware it was swinging both ways. His stomach, that is, not the ball.

Overweight cricketers can sometimes be surprisingly nimble on their feet.You wouldn’t have thought so of Inzamamul-Haq, who only took a single when he could walk it, looking less like a professional athlete than someone out walking the dog.

Inzy, however, stunned the entire cricketing world during a Pakistan v India exhibition match in Toronto in 2000, when for some unknown reason, he was despatched to patrol the boundary. Or at least stand on a patch of land close enough to the rope to perhaps get the attention of the hot dog seller when he felt peckish.

On this occasion, though, Inzy’s peaceful reverie out in the long grass was being spoiled by an Indian supporter in the crowd, who kept calling him a “potato”. And who presumably thought he was safe from retribution until – and this remains the only recorded instance of Inzy ever breaking sweat in a cricket match – the potato vaulted into the crowd and set about him. Cricket has always had a place for trenchermen, since the days of the most famous of them all, WG Grace. And who’s to say that the modern accent on diet and fitness is a better recipe for success than the old days? Talk about modern diets. During the 2013-14 Ashes series in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald got hold of an 82-page dossier issued by England regarding their culinary requirements on tour and gleefully published a selection. “Piri piri breaded tofu with tomato salsa”… “Quinoa and cranberry breakfast bar”….. Pistachio and ginger biscotti”…. “Kale and Agave syrup”. You can only admire such marvellous attention to detail. Adopting the old adage that an army marches on its stomach, England went into battle with health, fitness, vitamins, and vitality oozing from every pore. And lost 5-0.

Warne, at Old Trafford in 1993, became the first and only spinner in the history of the game to turn a ball from one side of Gatting to the other