Spirit On The Water

Thanks to John Harfield for designing the cover and to Viv Whittaker for the original idea of the cover. Thanks also to Viv for the ‘constructive feedback’ she gave while I was writing the book. Thanks to Jill for crossing some ‘t’s and dotting some ‘i’s. I’m also very grateful to Crawford Scholes who read the draft more than once. He did his best to correct my grammar and punctuation, and gave good advice on certain points of style. Most important of all, he spotted one or two cricket inaccuracies that had unaccountably slipped in!

Grateful thanks also to John Wisden & Co for their kind permission to reprint extracts from Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.

Vikings. They knew a thing or two about touring. Not for them complaints about the length of time away from home. Not for them the need for a flotilla of WAGs, kids and nannies to make the trip more bearable at Christmas time….. All they needed was a quick bonding session over a hog roast, a moment to pack up the sponsored long boat (not forgetting the pre-tour stop at the blacksmith’s for kit) and then set sail over the perishing seas. And woe betides if you returned without the trophy.

Still, embarking upon a cricket tour (whether or not the spoils are a des-res in Valhalla) is a life-affirming prospect. The heady mix of venturing in to the unknown with a group of guys and finding yourselves standard bearers for your club/village/county/country brings people together in a way that a Sunday 3
^rd
XI fixture in April never can.

When it comes to the cricket, few things are harder in sport than winning on tour. Not only are conditions alien – heat, insects, harder pitches, different balls, dodgy umpires – there are other perils designed to put you off your A game. For a start, there’s no significant other to drag you out of the pub. You find yourself sharing a room with a bloke whose snoring could launch a shotgun start. Most shocking of all, you find that your “dress sense” is not a hindrance to the local ladies. No wonder you’re struggling to find your metronomic line and length! Add those distractions to the fact that the locals think that your team is a joke and the further
blow that your best player isn’t travelling for “personal reasons” and you can see how tricky it’s going to be.

It is not, however, impossible. Taking the group decision to embrace the different culture, smile in the face of adversity and undertaking to have the general attitude of work hard, play hard and enjoy, will turn a rag-tag bunch of individuals into a close fighting unit. From there, anything is possible.

Put it this way, the Vikings certainly had plenty to overcome, and, rumour has it, they made quite a fist of it. And, were it not for their highly questionable record on sexual equality and personal property, they would surely have gone down as the best tourists of all time.

Spirit on the Water doesn’t include a Viking Tour, but it invokes the spirit and comradeship of touring to a tee.

Mark Butcher

Surrey and England

They say that you never forget your first time. In my case it is certainly true. She was warm and welcoming. Menorca in May, my first overseas cricket tour.

The year was 2000 and it was a minor miracle that the tour had taken place at all. There had been much speculation that aeroplanes would fall from the sky and computers would grind to a halt on the stroke of midnight at the start of the new millennium. Some people stockpiled food and others formed queues at cash dispensers on New Year’s Eve. Not for the first or last time, the
Daily Mail
predicted the end of the world, as we know it.

In the event, the ‘millennium bug’ of Y2K proved to be a bit of a damp squib. Admittedly, in Australia, bus ticket validation machines in two states failed to operate and in the United States, 150 slot machines at racetracks in Delaware stopped working. The world somehow managed to cope with these potential disasters. More importantly, the Ash Tree Cricket Club were able to tour Menorca.

The Ash Tree is a Taverners cricket club, quite literally as it is named after a tavern near Macclesfield called The Ash Tree. What is Taverners cricket and how is it different from normal club cricket? Well, for a start, in Taverners cricket you are encouraged to sledge but only your own side, as in: “Get a move on Paul, the bar’s open.” In Taverners cricket, the proposed start time is invariably a best estimate. Experienced captains will tell certain players a start
time of at least an hour earlier than the real one. Although it is nice to win, it really is the taking part that counts the most.

While we were in Menorca, a Test match was taking place at Lords and there was the usual abject batting display. This time however, it wasn’t England but their opponents who were struggling. After seeming to lose to everyone throughout the 1990s, England had finally managed to find a team they could beat ………. Zimbabwe.

Although it didn’t really seem like it at the time, in retrospect, England had quite an interesting team that season. As Nass gave his usual intense, inspirational pep talk, who would have guessed what stars of the future were sitting round him in the changing room. Four players destined to be
Sky
commentators: Atherton, Hussain, Knight (cricket) and Giddins (poker), two Strictly Come Dancing winners (Gough and Ramprakash), one
BBC
radio commentator who would like to do more work for
Sky
(Stewart) and a DIY expert (Caddick). A promising Lancashire all-rounder (Flintoff), a young leg spinner on début (Schofield) and a player England had borrowed from the opposition, made up the rest of the team.

Nasser Hussain invited Zimbabwe to bat first and they were soon skittled out for 83. Ed Giddins got 5 for 15, a Test high for him. Darren Gough and Andrew Caddick got the other wickets. Top score for Zimbabwe was Andy Flower, later to become England’s coach. At the time he was Zimbabwe’s captain, leading batsman and wicket-keeper. He probably washed the kit and made the teas too.

When it was England’s turn to bat they scored a creditable 415. Stewart made an undefeated century and celebrated with a hundred press-ups. Graeme Hick also scored a century against his native country. He was on 99 for a nervous twenty two minutes
and he must have been worried that Mike Atherton would try and persuade Hussain to declare.
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Eventually he got his century and was evidently so relieved that he relaxed his concentration, and Heath Streak had him LBW next ball.

Zimbabwe did not do much better second time around. They were bowled out for 123 with Gough, Caddick and Giddins again sharing the wickets. Flintoff only bowled three overs in the match and scored one run with the bat. This was marginally better than poor Chris Schofield who, in his first match for England, didn’t bowl at all and got a third ball duck. He did get a bowl in the second Test against Zimbabwe, which ended in a draw, but probably wished he hadn’t (0 for 73 off 18 overs). Interestingly,
Wisden
recorded that the two young Lancastrians, Flintoff and Schofield, appeared to lack the nous required at the highest level.

The Ash Tree would have welcomed either or both of them on our trip to Menorca that year. Indeed, Andrew Flintoff owns a house less than a mile from our home ground, so we have high hopes of recruiting him. Although he’s retired now and based in Dubai, he should be OK for the occasional game of limited overs cricket and the Ash Tree CC cricket is very limited. So it seems a natural fit. We only play on Sundays. Everyone has to bowl three overs, so Freddie shouldn’t get too tired during his spell. When batting, once you get to 30 you have to retire and come back at the end if everyone is out. If the sun is shining and the players are thirsty, beer is brought out to the fielding side and two batsmen halfway through the innings. If the sun isn’t shining then beer is usually brought out anyway. The Ash Tree teas are famous for both their quality and quantity. A couple of seasons ago, someone introduced wine as an optional extra and that seems to have
stayed on as a regular fixture. Then Mark, a belligerent batsman and fearless fielder with a certain style, raised the bar by providing port and cheese as well. I can’t help but think that Freddie would fit in well.

Back in 2000, Andrew Flintoff was still a promising young
all-rounder
who, it was said, “lacked the nous required at the highest level” so, coupled with the fact that he was required at Lords, he wasn’t really a candidate for our Menorca tour.

We only planned to play one match in Menorca but we needed two days to prepare and then two days to recover. It might seem a long way to go to only play one 30-over-a-side cricket match but you would be surprised how much these games can take out of you.

Our morning flight from Manchester to Mahon left on time and, as it took off, my Ash Tree team-mate sitting next to me, pulled out a hip flask full of whisky. I mention this simply to illustrate the fact that when you are on a cricket tour, things happen. I had never seen David drink whisky before and I haven’t seen him do it since. Equally, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t take out a flask of whisky mid-flight when he goes on holiday with his family.

Unfortunately for David, the air-hostess spotted his flask and told him off like a scolded schoolboy. To avoid confiscation, he promised to put it away and not get it out again till we had landed safely in Menorca. He also agreed to write out 100 times “I must not take a hip flask of whisky on to an aircraft even if I am on a cricket tour”. Nowadays of course, he wouldn’t be able to get the flask through the multitude of security operations that you have to navigate just to get on the aeroplane. Even breast milk can be confiscated unless of course it is being carried
au naturel
.

We arrived at Mahon without further mishap and took the short trip to the hotel. We had two days preparation and acclimatisation to look forward to. I’m sure when England go abroad they head
straight for the hotel gym and then start organising a net. At the Ash Tree, we believe that nets are greatly overrated and that it’s important not to peak too early. The prevailing philosophy of the club is that it’s no good wasting all your good shots in a net. Also, the generally held view is that gyms are to be avoided at all costs because of the risk of pulled muscles.

So we concentrated on ‘acclimatisation’ and team bonding. These are positive characteristics of a cricket tour that England has possibly neglected since the days of Beefy, Lamby and Porky.
2
If you share a beer with a team-mate in the early hours of the morning then you are less likely to be upset if he lets the ball through his legs off your bowling the next day. Of course, you could argue that drinking beer in the early hours tends to increase your chances of letting the ball through your legs the next day, but be that as it may.

Feeling fully acclimatised we set out, in brilliant sunshine, for our game against the MCC (Menorca Cricket Club). There are quite a few differences between Macclesfield and Menorca in May. The most obvious one, that we couldn’t help but notice, is that it wasn’t raining. What’s more, it was wonderfully warm. At home, you would be trying to remember if you put that second, or maybe third, sweater in your cricket bag. You would probably be glancing anxiously at the sky and hoping that the huge black cloud goes away. More than likely, those players not out on the field would be congregating in the changing room trying to keep out of the wind.

Menorca Cricket Club has a delightful setting. As you drive through typical, parched, Mediterranean habitat, you arrive at an oasis of green and what is instantly recognisable as a cricket
ground. It’s not a converted football pitch. It’s not a dust bowl. It’s a proper cricket ground with a scoreboard, sight-screens, a pavilion and a bar. The club has its own well, so is able to water the outfield and as a result play on a lush green ground. The only concession to being on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean is an artificial wicket.

Our regular wicket-keeper at the time was Alan who is sadly no longer with us. He had silky skills behind the stumps and it was unusual for a match to go by without him claiming at least one stumping victim. If we had a youngster playing against us and he was tempted out of his crease, as youngsters often are, Alan would always give him a life by deliberately missing the bails with his attempted stumping. Another difference between club cricket and Taverners cricket!

On this occasion, Alan was enjoying his cricket tour so much that he didn’t want to spoil it all by actually playing cricket. Late into the night before the match, he and Iwan – an Ash Tree stalwart now retired from the rigours of the cricket field – had been chatting in the hotel bar to an elegant lady of a certain age. The following morning they checked with her in case they had said or done anything untoward. She said that on the contrary, she had enjoyed their company and that they had been “irresponsibly harmless”.

This became our motto for the tour and indeed could serve as a maxim for most cricket tours. “Irresponsibly harmless” just about sums it all up. You may get some players doing something a bit silly on tour but it will rarely be detrimental to anyone but themselves.

Alan was enjoying himself in Menorca and was quite happy to give up his place to Geoff, who fancied a go at keeping wicket. Geoff was a friend of some of the players. He may well have played
cricket in the dim distant past but certainly not recently. Whether he had ever kept wicket before was not clear.

The Menorca team seemed like a good bunch of guys, but gave the impression of being quite decent players. You can usually tell from the way a team warms up before a match as to how good they are going to be. In fact, just warming up at all before the game immediately put them in the upper quartile of teams that we play. Chatting about their recent fixture against the Warwickshire over 50s didn’t help our confidence either. They won the toss and thankfully decided to bat. We didn’t want the game over too quickly, however inviting the bar looked.

John, our opening bowler, was quite quick by Taverners standards. His first ball got some bounce off the artificial wicket and the batsman left it. The ball was still rising as it made minimal contact with the keeper’s gloves and smashed straight into Geoff’s face. He collapsed in a heap with blood streaming from his face.

He was helped off the field and Alan was roused from the comfort of his deck chair and San Miguel to don the pads. The cricket bit of Geoff’s tour had lasted one ball (he wasn’t required to bat). Although we were sorry about Geoff’s misfortune, it has to be said that Alan’s presence on the pitch brought a calm air of reassurance to the proceedings.

Wicket-keeper is a key position in cricket whether it’s at Taverners or Test level. Ideally, you want your best glove man behind the stumps. This may seem obvious but has rarely happened for England since Jack Russell hung up his gloves in 1997. For the last ten years, Chris Read has been arguably England’s best
wicket-keeper
. During that time, he has only played fifteen Tests but, despite that, he is the only keeper from any country, to claim six dismissals in an innings three times. This includes successive Test matches against Australia in 2006/07. England treated him rather
badly, partly because it was perceived that his batting wasn’t up to scratch, but mainly because he apparently didn’t get on with Duncan Fletcher. ‘Not getting on with’ the England coach is not a good idea if you want to play for England. Interestingly, Read averages over 36 with the bat in all first-class cricket; his
bête noire
, Geraint Jones, slightly less. Matt Prior, a better bat than both of them, seems to have settled the argument for the time being now that his keeping has improved.

At the Ash Tree, we never had a selection dilemma with the wicket-keeping position. If Alan was available to play, he was the keeper. No one would argue with that. With his trademark leg glances and subtle cuts, he was also useful for some late order runs. With Alan in position behind the stumps, Menorca resumed their innings. They progressed at a steady rate with three of their batsmen retiring at 30. We felt we had done quite well to restrict them to 188 off their 30 overs.

Just over six an over was the asking rate which doesn’t sound too much if you say it quickly. The trouble was that the target was six runs
every
over. If an over went by when we didn’t get at least six runs, then the asking rate went up. And we didn’t, so it did. Three run-outs didn’t help the cause and we finished up some way short of the target on 120 for 8.

We had lost but not disgraced ourselves. Our hosts looked after us well, recommending places that we should try to visit during our remaining time on the island. On our return to England, we received a copy of the match report that Menorca CC had put in their local newspaper. It included the words: “Though Ash Tree may not be the finest (cricketing) side we have met this season, they are certainly one of the friendliest and their après cricket is without equal.” We took this as the compliment that I think it was intended to be.