The day the grand old game proved it will not die without a fight
FATHER Time stood stooped but serene on his perch above Lord’s on Friday afternoon, no gusts to buffet him. Below, the English County Championship, in all its yeoman glory, in all its redoubtableness, in all its capacity for summoning an absurdly exciting finish to a five-month season, bathed in the last of summer’s sunlight.
As the players of Middlesex and Yorkshire bounded towards the pavilion for lunch with two sessions of their title decider to go, an announcement reminded spectators that they were allowed to wander on to the outfield during the break. Four or five hundred fans, gathered around the square, turned lunch into a garden party.
Mothers carrying babies in slings mingled with men in cream linen suits and MCC members in their bacon and egg ties as they wandered across the turf of one of the most famous arenas in sport. Some stopped to study the white initials TB, scrawled on the grass to mark the start of Tim Bresnan’s run-up. It was a day for taking pleasure in small details.
There are times when watching the four-day form of county cricket feels like mourning for something that has been lost, an essential part of our Englishness deserted by degrees and pushed towards the margins of the national consciousness. Friday was not one of those days. Friday was a celebration of all cricket’s endeavour, all its eccentricity and all its appeal.
Before the thrilling denouement, I sat for a while in the upper level of the Compton Stand and listened to some of the conversations going on around me. One group was discussing the origins of Middlesex batsman Eskinazi and imagining him as an eastern European spy character from a John le Carre novel. They were disappointed to learn his first name was Stevie and he was born in South Africa.
Another group was arguing bitterly about the spirit of cricket. There is always an argument raging somewhere about the spirit of cricket. One man was saying that the mid-afternoon attempt to contrive a result was a disgrace. His friend was telling him it was a necessary part of the game. One was accused of lecturing the other, they fell out and a sulky silence descended. There was laughter when Yorkshire gave their opening batsmen the ball. Adam Lyth and Alex Lees tossed up a series of long-hops and dolly drops so Middlesex could set a target more quickly. There was some hilarity when Dawid Malan, who had made 116, slammed a full toss straight to square leg where Jack Brooks caught it before he remembered he was supposed to be letting Middlesex score. When I walked back to the Nursery End, I saw former England captain Michael Atherton by the lifts to the media centre. A spectator was engaging him in conversation about the last day of the championship season in 1987, when Lancashire missed the chance to win the title with a game against Essex. Atherton was smiling and saying he blamed it on the grass on the outfield at Chelmsford being left too long. Fond reminiscences were everywhere. Back on the field, 10 overs from the close, on the final day of the season, it was still possible that any one of three teams could win the title. In the end, Yorkshire’s run-chase faltered and with it their chance of winning the crown for the third year i n succession. Middlesex were the winners and what a finish it had been.
What a day. What a glorious advertisement for our summer game. So often maligned, so often scorned, it felt as if the County Championship had been given a shot of love. ‘I can’t remember county cricket being spoken about so much,’ another former England captain Michael Vaughan wrote on Twitter. ‘Great for the game. Great crowd. Huge social media interest.’
There was too. There are not too many times you can say this but County Championship was trending on Twitter for most of the afternoon and evening. So was #MiddxvYorks. So was Toby Roland-Jones, who finished the game with a hat-trick.
If Twitter is the natural bedfellow of any form of cricket, it would be Twenty20 but the longer form of the county game had hijacked it for once. Twenty20, with its thrilling hitting and its booze-soaked crowds, may well be the future for the short-attention-span generation but this week, the four-day game seemed wonderfully relevant again.
There were dissenters, of course, and Kevin Pietersen made his point particularly trenchantly. ‘More people watching a charity T20 at Oval last night than at Lords watching Champo showdown,’ he wrote. ‘T20 is only way forward! Absolutely room for all formats! But T20 is taking over! Anyone with a 1/4 of a brain can see it!’
It is hard to argue that the momentum is not with the shortest form of the game. For all the drama, for all the importance of the match, there were only 5,865 spectators at the Home of Cricket to see its final day. Half of the stands were shut. Ropes barred entry to the lower tier of the Compton and Edrich stands, the Tavern Stand, the Warner Stand and the Grand Stand. Only a few corporate boxes were open for guests.
When a new city-based T20 competition is introduced in England, probably in 2018, that may tilt the balance of power even further. Add to that the fact that Yorkshire and England spinner Adil Rashid said he was too tired to play against Middlesex this week, England’s nominal one-day captain Eoin Morgan was not selected by Middlesex and Yorkshire’s Jonny Bairstow was prevented from playing by the ECB and it proves that county cricket is fighting on a lot of fronts.
But at least the magic that unfurled on Friday showed it is fighting hard and that is worth fighting for. Twenty20 may be on the rise but it cannot replicate the subtleties and the rhythms, the innings and the skills, the delights and quirkiness of the domestic four-day game. There is still a place for the County Championship in the English culture that it has enriched so much. There has to be.
T20 can’t replicate the delights, quirkiness and skills of four-day cricket