Notts Cricket Thread | Page 32 | Vital Football

Notts Cricket Thread

The start of the breakaway United All England Eleven
By 1854 the All-England XI are playing a three-day game in Bristol at a ground made by a fellow called Grace who has several sons keen on the game. One of those sons, aged 14, fields so athletically at long-stop that William Clarke gives young Edward a bat. His six year-old brother is watching from the family pony-trap - watching these 11 touring cricketers playing cricket both for fun and a living (Clarke paid about five pounds per game i.e several times the average weekly wage).
Clarke also gives Mrs Grace a little instructional book entitled “Cricket Notes”, to which Clarke himself has contributed the section about bowling, and signed as “Secretary, All-England Eleven.” It becomes a family heirloom and source of inspiration.
Four years later, when that six-year-old boy named William Gilbert is ten, his mother writes to Clarke’s successor as the captain of the All England Eleven, George Parr of Nottingham, saying that while Edward is good at batting, WG is even better, because he can play on the back foot as well as front.
WG plays his first games of note against the All England Eleven. Some players then revolted in favour of higher pay, and formed the breakaway United All England Eleven. Grace was playing for another breakaway group, the United South XI, when in 1876 he scored 400 not out against XXII of Grimsby. His gigantic run-making that season seized the nation by the ears, making cricket the summer sport - and it had only been possible because Clarke had demonstrated that money could be made out of cricket. Grace was an all-round athlete in his youth: but for the openings created by Clarke, he might have stuck with track and field, or boxing, and doctoring, and never played cricket after childhood.
So, an England cricket team touring the country, as the only form of professional cricket to be seen: yes, this summer we are back to square one, and Clarke’s invention.


Selling cricket further afield
Nottingham therefore produces the first professional cricketers of substance in William Clarke, George Parr, Richard Daft, Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury. Some of them are also landlords, or owners of shops selling sports equipment; not forelock-tuggers, they know their own worth as the best cricketers in England as well as Nottinghamshire, and are ready to strike if they see fit. And they not only spread cricket in Britain, as never before, but abroad.

The first of all touring teams, the one to the USA and Canada in 1859, was captained by George Parr. He also led the second touring team to Australia, in 1863-4: they went unbeaten through their tour and cleared £250 per man. In 1879 Richard Daft led another team of professionals to the USA, when a crowd totalling 25,000 watched their three-day game against Philadelphia.
The most ambitious of all England cricket tours, in 1881-2, was promoted by Shaw, who was also the captain, and Shrewsbury, and James Lillywhite, the Sussex pro who had captained England in the inaugural Test of 1876-7. The team sailed to the USA, crossed the country by train while playing games en route, voyaged to Australia and played a Test there before going to New Zealand, then returned to Australia for three more Tests. They were playing for almost six months and even though cricket crowds were slumping in America, it was a profitable venture. Shaw and Shrewsbury promoted three more tours of the Antipodes in the 1880s, with Shrewsbury as the England captain; and having led these merry men all winter, he captained Nottinghamshire to the county championship in four consecutive summers in the 1880s, the county’s golden age.
Notts still produce pace bowlers
It is good that while Nottinghamshire sign their batsmen from other counties, they still produce pace bowlers. The collieries have closed, along with their cricket grounds - about 25 colliery grounds have disappeared according to Peter Wynne-Thomas - but strapping local lads are still taking the new ball, like Jake Ball and Luke Fletcher. (Q. How have England’s selectors wasted Ball’s talent? A. By never giving him a run in the side, only four Tests on flat pitches.)
 
When Nottinghamshire won the championship in 1929, their five main bowlers all came from collieries, starting with Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, who were good enough to break the hold which Lancashire had on the county championship (Lancashire won it from 1926-28 and again in 1930). Larwood and Voce would go to the Trent Bridge Inn at lunchtime for a few pints, pulled by Mr and Mrs Clarke’s successors, when the alcoholic content was not so high - then roll up their sleeves and sweat it out in the afternoon, if opposing batsmen hung around that long.
Trent Bridge offered Larwood and Voce two advantages. “Trent Bridge wickets are the fastest in England, that quickening marl being used almost to extremes,” wrote Fred Root, who played a few Tests contemporaneously. The names of the best groundsmen are never recorded like those of cricketers - another feature of this sport’s historiography - but Walter Marshall was the man who encouraged Larwood and Voce to become Bradman-busters.
Larwood and Voce had a second asset when playing at home: Trent Bridge in their day had no sightscreens. Imagine the quality of light on a cloudy day in an industrial city which had factories belching smoke - and no sightscreens, at either end. The person who sparked the players’ demand for sightscreens was Herbert Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire opening batsman, who lost sight of a ball against the background of the Oval pavilion at a crucial moment in the 1926 Ashes - but it was a slow process. County members did not want their best seats behind the arm impeded.
How Sir Julien Cahn’s XI bolstered the coffers
Nottingham, strange as it may now seem, has been home to two teams of first-class quality and status: Nottinghamshire CCC and, just down the Loughborough Road in West Bridgford, Sir Julien Cahn’s XI. This was cricket’s biggest ego-trip - though who could blame him? - and it poured more money into the county coffers.
Cahn made his millions out of a new scheme, selling furniture on hire purchase. The son of a Jewish emigrant from Germany, he, like Siegfried Sassoon, made himself more English than English by playing cricket and fox-hunting. He used some of his wealth to become a most admirable philanthropist, saving Newstead Abbey by buying Byron’s home for the nation, and founding a charity which offered gas and oxygen to women in childbirth. In addition to his West Bridgford ground, he bought Stanford Hall in Lincolnshire and installed another ground; together they staged the last flowerings of country house cricket.
Cahn was also vain, perhaps through underlying insecurity, and took himself very seriously. So one of the unwritten rules was that Sir Julien Cahn’s XI could not lose: and he hired so many Test and top-class players, from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, that “his team lost only 19 of the 621 matches that they played between 1923 and 1939, and their winter tours - to such places as Canada, Argentina, Jamaica, Ceylon and New Zealand - were spoken of for years afterwards” according to Stephen Chalke in “The Way It Was”. His overseas players could manage one of his 300 stores if they wanted a winter job.
Cahn’s hospitality was lavish - and the unconscious humour he supplied abundant too. For the second unwritten law was that Cahn could not be dismissed for nought, or be hit for 36 off an over, as he would have been if merit had decided. So he had his own umpire, John Gunn of the famous bat-making family, and his own special pair of pads - an extreme version of the kind Graham Roope used to wear when playing for Surrey and England in the 1970s. Cahn’s chauffeur, accustomed to blowing up tyres, would inflate these pneumatic pads - until the day they burst when Cahn was batting, and he lost face, and the chauffeur was instantly sacked.
As Fred Root, no relation to Joe, enjoyed country house cricket in his old age, he said most diplomatically in his book, “A Cricket Pro’s Lot”: “Sir Julien plays himself, gets runs and wickets.” Well, this is what the scorebook was made to record. But the ball would hit his pads (perhaps plumb in front), then whizz away for leg-byes, only the umpire would signal them as runs off Sir Julien’s bat. We have EW Swanton’s word: “the pads were very large, and the ball bounced readily off them for leg-byes, which the umpires conveniently forgot to signal.”
MCC had no truck with New Money, but Nottinghamshire CCC made Cahn their president, and they inherited his unrivalled collection of bats, which are now exhibited in the pavilion at Trent Bridge. If you walk down the steps from those dressing-rooms which were built for the 1899 Ashes, and look to your right, you can see some of the bats used by players in that game.
What happier way to have escaped the advancing horrors of Nazi Germany in 1939 than playing for Sir Julien Cahn’s XI? A couple of Aussie spinners to do the bowling when you played serious teams, like the touring West Indians. Games against Bedfordshire and, into the August of that year, against Scotland and Ireland. A week of lavish hospitality, the highest privilege and excellent cricket - yes, what better way to go.
 
The signing of Garfield Sobers
Five thousand pounds for the 1968 season, which is the equivalent of £74,000 today: that was the highest bid, made by Nottinghamshire, for the services of the greatest allrounder, Garfield Sobers, when instant registration was introduced in 1968. It may not sound much, but this was pre-Packer, and by comparison some England players were earning less than £1000 per year.
Nottinghamshire after the Second World War had been content with being well-off and unsuccessful. In 1951 they finished bottom of the table for the first time; passed the wooden spoon on to Somerset, who finished bottom for the next four seasons; then re-claimed it in 1958, 1959, 1961, 1965 and 1966. The Trent Bridge pitches became flat, the whole set-up was rather flat, but the stags were content to lean on glories past.
In his first season Sobers raised Nottinghamshire from 15th to fourth. It will always be one of the game’s indelible images, when Sobers hit Malcolm Nash for six sixes in an over at Swansea in 1968 Remember those were the days of bats weighing little more than two pounds. The key was the arc in which Sobers swung his bat. Players that dared to field anywhere close to Sobers would recount how they could hear the bat slap against the back of his shirt as he completed a boundary hit. In 1969 however he was away for half the season captaining West Indies on their tour of England; and in 1970 captaining the Rest of the World in their five Tests. It was back to the bottom half of the table, until...

“In late 1977 Nottinghamshire became the first county to have not a Secretary but a Chief Executive who would make all the day-to-day decisions without referring to the committee,” Stephen Chalke wrote in “Summer’s Crown”. “Philip Carling, who had developed the money-spinning Trent Bridge Squash Club, was appointed but he did not want the hiring and firing of players to fall within his remit.” So Ken Taylor became the manager, a former Warwickshire batsman, aged 61. “He (Taylor) took us by the scruff of the neck,” said Clive Rice, who in 1981 captained Nottinghamshire to their first championship since 1929.
I doubt whether batting in county cricket has ever been so demanding since Rice and Richard Hadlee were backed by Kevin Cooper, and by the groundsman Ron Allsop, who suited his pitches to Nottinghamshire’s colours, with Eddie Hemmings to flush out any lingerers. This was value for money alright. Hadlee was the son of an accountant and brought that mindset to achieving the double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in the first-class season of 1984. Another Nottinghamshire allrounder, Franklyn Stephenson, is the only one to have done it since, in 1988.
Will Notts give local players another chance?
In 2003 Nottinghamshire were one of the first counties to set up an academy under ECB guidelines. A primary question was whether academy players would play for their own clubs or for an Academy XI in the local premier league. The committee decided the Academy XI would participate in the Nottinghamshire Premier League.
One consequence was that, to put an XI into the league every Saturday after first-team call-ups, injuries and so on, almost 20 young players were needed. This in turn meant these players did not receive much individual attention. Now, however, the Academy players play for their clubs, which strengthens the whole league structure, and allows for more concentrated development. Almost every league in England seems to have declined in overall standard, but the Nottinghamshire Premier still has some strong clubs, with a few patrons funding some well-paid players.
Another committee decision was that Nottinghamshire Second XI would not play at Trent Bridge but at the Lady Bay ground down the road. When one of the lads made his first XI debut, it was like being at an away ground, everything new. The pitches at Trent Bridge have more bounce than Lady Bay, and the field different dimensions. It seems bizarre that Nottinghamshire would not give their young players the normal benefits of home advantage.
In casting round for an opening pair after Darren Bicknell and Jason Gallian, Nottinghamshire did not follow the axiom that batsmen brought up in southern counties, which normally have drier and easier pitches, struggle to adjust to northern counties, if they ever do. They signed Will Jefferson from Essex, and Neil Edwards and Matt Wood from Somerset, none of them prospering in red- or white-ball at Trent Bridge, while Academy lads were not given a prolonged opportunity to claim a place.
Paul Johnson was the club’s captain then batting coach, at the club for 33 years in all, before joining Leicestershire’ two years ago - and has since become a Nottinghamshire vice-president. “I felt our academy players reached a glass ceiling,” he says. No guarantee, of course, that any youngster will succeed when introduced to first-team cricket, but Johnson singles out Sam Kelsall and Sam Wood, who was in the England Under-19 side for two years, and Hassan Azad who was Leicestershire 's highest red-ball runscorer last season, as three batsmen who deserved more of a chance.
“A player wasn’t a player unless he came from somewhere else, or it seemed that way,” Johnson reflects. “At times I sat down and thought - why do we bother running an academy and Second XI?”
The long-accepted formula is that a county, to succeed, needs a core of local lads; on to this core some shrewd signings from other counties or countries are grafted. Nottinghamshire did buck this trend when they won the county championship in 2005, without any regular player who had been born in the county, and again in 2010, when Paul Franks was the only one. But in 2005 they had Stephen Fleming as captain, the New Zealander who could weld any team together, and in both seasons the rugged Australian David Hussey weighed in with 250s.
Maybe the answer is blowing in the wind, as if droplets of Covid-19 are bringing a solution with them: Nottinghamshire, like every other county, will have to tighten their belt, sign fewer players from elsewhere or abroad, and give more of their youngsters a chance.
 
Ironic that most of our younger players have gone elsewhere. Milnes at Kent seems to be doing particularly well. Kimble has gone to Surrey but he is still very young (18 ?). Libby is doing better at Worcs , Root at Glamorgan, Azad at Leicestershire, Fraine at Yorkshire . Luke Wood at Lancashire too.

England playing Aus on Friday ORF. Have you succumbed to the T20 bug yet ? Guess you won't be getting up at 3 to watch it !?
 
Lienking said:
Ironic that most of our younger players have gone elsewhere. Milnes at Kent seems to be doing particularly well. Kimble has gone to Surrey but he is still very young (18 ?). Libby is doing better at Worcs , Root at Glamorgan, Azad at Leicestershire, Fraine at Yorkshire . Luke Wood at Lancashire too.

England playing Aus on Friday ORF. Have you succumbed to the T20 bug yet ? Guess you won't be getting up at 3 to watch it !?
Click to expand...

Darned right I won't LK. although I do try to watch some of the proper stuff. Actually I did clock on to the tailend of the Yorks T20 game but that style of straight slogging just does nothing for me, no guile.
Must say though that I do appreciate the opportunity to switch on the computer and see a bit of the live stuff from Notts. And I enjoyed reading your posts the other day, especially when the talk got around to Bill Voce, Joe Hardstaff and the rest of them, Voce and others of that era were still playing when I was watching, fair took me back. I'd no idea that Voce had played for that length of time.

Thanks for all that info,it went down a treat.
 
Old Red Fart said:
Darned right I won't LK. although I do try to watch some of the proper stuff. Actually I did clock on to the tailend of the Yorks T20 game but that style of straight slogging just does nothing for me, no guile.
Must say though that I do appreciate the opportunity to switch on the computer and see a bit of the live stuff from Notts. And I enjoyed reading your posts the other day, especially when the talk got around to Bill Voce, Joe Hardstaff and the rest of them, Voce and others of that era were still playing when I was watching, fair took me back. I'd no idea that Voce had played for that length of time.

Thanks for all that info,it went down a treat.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Back to four day cricket tomorrow. Durham are a pretty poor team. Wonder if we are in with a chance of breaking our two year duck ? Interesting to see if Imad Wasim or Dan Christian play in the four day game. (Pretty sure DC won't, but you never know). We are desperately in need of some decent bowlers. (Not that our batsmen live up to their reputations in the four day game !)
 
Anyone else watch the quarter final ? Never seen a game swing so many times. Looked like we had done most of the job when Leics only made 139 for 7. Then it looked like we'd thrown it away. We only qualified because of two misfields , one off the very last ball. Next game 2.30 on Saturday, same time as Forest. Hopefully rain will delay it till Sunday.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/cricket/54376401
 
Glad it rained yesterday, but I hope the games are sorted out properly today. A bowl out is no way to settle the final of a major competition.
 
Just saying to my son that Christian wasn't timing it, before he hits four successive sixes !! We're in the final !!
 
Dane Paterson (one t ) made his debut on Thursday. Notts seem to be scanning the world for Pattersons/Pattinsons/Pietersons to the point that I can't actually remember all their names ! Paterson (one t, South Africa) should not be confused with the bloke we had from Australia, who plays for Australia, or the bloke we found in Australia, who then played for England, or even with Patterson -White, who due to the limitations of the Trentbridge live scoreboard has his name displayed as Patterson- (Patterson hyphen ). Patterson hyphen and Paterson (SA) even got to bat together yesterday, but unfortunately it only lasted about two balls !
 
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