THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

Don Bradman, Richie Benaud, Barry Richards, Ted Dexter, Martin Crowe and Shane Warne, the half-dozen former cricketers who Mark Nicholas believes were able “to think outside the box”.

My old friend and former team-mate, Mark Nicholas, always pointed to six Test cricketers of another age who were great thinkers about the game, who had radical ideas how cricket could be improved, who were capable of “thinking outside the box”, as he put it. They were Don Bradman, Richie Benaud, Ted Dexter, Barry Richards, Martin Crowe and Shane Warne. I use the past tense of the verb advisedly because they are all dead…except one, Barry Richards, who is still, thankfully, very much with us. He’s 80 next month, but he remains in fine fettle and continues to play his beloved golf. He was back in the UK to watch the recent final of the World Test Championship between Australia and South Africa (which South Africa won, thus finally ridding themselves of the tag of ‘chokers’, which has bedevilled them for so long). As he was in the country, I arranged to meet him for lunch, to chat about old times and to laugh at the scrapes we got up to in our Hampshire days. Usually, I make an effort to steer the conversation to the modern game and, as usual, his views made for fascinating listening.

On top of his peerless batsmanship, Barry Richards possessed a deep cricketing brain, and a forensic evaluation of how the game could be improved. Truly, he was one who “thought outside the box”.

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First, he picked up where Bradman had left off. When I was writing Colin Cowdrey’s biography, the family gave me full access to the Cowdrey papers. Among them, I discovered letter after letter from Bradman to Cowdrey, all written in that characteristic tiny handwriting on those old, blue, airmail letters. At the time Cowdrey was chairman of the International Cricket Council, in a position of some influence in the game, and Bradman was encouraging him to argue for the abandonment of the current front foot law for no balls and revert to the old back foot law. Barry took up the argument. “For an umpire to watch whether the back foot overreaches the back line and then to look up to the business end of the pitch to adjudge snicks and LBWs, he has a fraction longer than when he is checking whether the bowler has overstepped on the popping crease. In other words, checking on the back foot, which lands before the front foot, gives him that extra fraction of a second longer to swivel his eyes to look up and have a better chance of making the correct decision.” But DRS (Decision Review System) makes for more accurate decisions anyway. “Yes, but how many thousands of matches played up and down the country in the recreational game have TV replays?” Fair enough. But what about the old problem of ‘dragging’? In the past, some bowlers, particularly fast bowlers, would land their back foot behind the line but drag it over, sometimes well over, delivering the ball a couple of feet nearer to the batsman. “If they drag, they drag,” he responded, “The modern game is too much weighted in favour of the batsman anyway. Over the years, there has been an explosion in the development of bats – the thickness of them now is mind-boggling – as well as shorter boundaries, but the ball hasn’t changed over the centuries. Time to redress the balance.”

Under the old law, the back foot has landed behind the bowling crease – therefore the delivery is legal – even though the front foot is going to land well in front of the popping crease, quite possibly a couple of feet nearer to the batsman.

“And another thing,” – he was really on a roll now – “what is the point of leg-byes?” I awaited illumination. “The batsman has made a mistake, missed the ball, it hits the pad, and a run is awarded to the batting side. Reward for a mistake? Crazy!” On reflection, I believe he has a point. The sensible course of action would be for the umpire to call dead ball, and the game could continue untroubled on its merry way. Mind you, that would remove the amusing incidence of a batsman getting run out attempting a leg-bye. I am reminded of the occasion when I was struck a glancing blow on the head – no helmets in those days – and the ball ricocheted down to third man. The bowler was highly amused at the umpire signalling leg-bye while I was ambling up the wicket rubbing the top of my head.

Another of my former Hampshire team-mates, John Holder, signalling a leg-bye.

Arguably the most interesting and most radical opinion he voiced while we munched on our sausage baps concerned the rolling of the pitch.. “Once the first ball has been bowled, the pitch should not be rolled.” I choked on a morsel of sausage, so he immediately sought to clarify what he meant. “Sweep up, repair footholes, repaint the creases but leave the pitch alone.” Why? He had already voiced his opinion that the game has tilted too much in favour of the batsman. “Take the recent Test at Headingley between England and India. There were seven centuries in the match and only one five-wicket haul. 7-1 ratio between bat and ball is unbalanced.” I gave that some thought. If there were no flattening of bumps and divots in the pitch, the odds would be evened up a bit and the spinners might come into the equation more. Food for thought.

The time-honoured ritual of rolling the pitch. Barry suggests that no rolling should take place once the game has started. This might help the spinners, he claims.

Apartheid, and South Africa’s sporting isolation, meant that Barry only played four Tests. Bradman played 52, Benaud 63, Dexter 62, Crowe 77 and Warne 145. How very sad, for someone who, in the considered opinion of those who played with him and against him, was the finest batsman of his generation. What is also very sad is that Barry became a victim of what you might call reverse-apartheid. In the new Rainbow Nation, his own country, he was shunned as being ‘damaged goods’, an uncomfortable reminder of a dark past, which had very little to do with him. This meant that his articulate and knowledgeable commentary on the modern game found no voice on radio or television. He is a consummate performer in front of the microphone but his services in the media were constantly spurned, and cricket lovers were the poorer for it.

Barry was a consummate performer as a commentator.

At least I had the pleasure of listening to him for a couple of hours before he departed for home in Knysna in the Western Cape and his treasured golf course.

When he was treading the boards in lesser-known county outposts while his team-mates, Gordon Greenidge and Andy Roberts, were tripping the light fantastic in Test match cricket, Barry started to become bored with the daily grind of the Championship. Frequently he would reach 70 or 80 and, in an attempt to amuse himself he would play an extravagant shot and get out. On his own admission, he was never an accumulator of runs. My last words to him as we parted was not to play a silly shot and get out in his 80s.