Last-Wicket Stand

Martin Chandler | 8:46am GMT 20 February 2022

Published: 2020
Pages: 286
Author: Clarke, Richard
Publisher: Pitch
Rating: 4 stars

The 2019 season, its cricket and where the game’s future is going has already been the subject of four books, by Michael Henderson, Duncan Hamilton, Tim Cawkwell and Ben Stokes, and the only reason I can offer for being slow off the mark on this one is because I wasn’t sure that I really needed to read a fifth. Eventually however Last-Wicket Stand got to the top of the pending pile and, not for the first time, my initial misgivings turned out to be entirely misplaced.

Despite concentrating in the main, as did the other four authors, on the single summer of 2019, Clarke nonetheless manages to write a very different kind of book to the competition, whilst at the same time having a little of all four in terms of his combination of nostalgia, reportage, autobiography and opinion.

In terms of purely cricketing matters Clarke is a lifelong Essex supporter, and one who was able to follow his team round the country as they got off to a slow start in the Championship, before slowly pulling Somerset back in, then edging ahead before finally, at their rivals’ headquarters in Taunton, conspiring with the weather to secure the draw needed to secure the title.

As Clarke was able to see much of Essex’s season there is much about the games, written as he viewed at the time and also, occasionally, with the benefit of hindsight. He wasn’t able to get to every single day of the summer’s campaign, but in some ways the occasional games of catch up that that leads to enhance rather than detract from his account. There is, additionally, a full description of finals day in the Vitality Blast, the winning of which meant a double triumph.

At this point it is perhaps worth saying that Clarke is, like so many who read cricket literature, first and foremost an aficionado of the First Class game. That is not to say however that he does not derive pleasure from watching the shorter formats, the need for which we all understand. That said he is not, in common with almost every lover of the county game, a friend of The Hundred.

Any mention of The Hundred inevitably brings into focus the vexed question of the future of the domestic game in England. There may well be, as for all who fell under the game’s spell in childhood, elements of looking back through rose tinted spectacles, but Clarke also has the ability, which I have to confess I personally struggle with, to look forward with clarity. To demonstrate that, half way through the book, he takes time out to marshall his thoughts on the way ahead, and coolly and rationally explain the flaws in the ECB’s reasoning.

And the autobiographical elements? They add much to the story, although Clarke does not share his entire history with his reader. A man entering his sixth decade as the book unfolds Clarke clearly regards his late father, the man from whom, like so many of us, he acquired his love of cricket, with great reverence and there mentions on a number of occasions of his youth and his own playing days. Like many I suspect he may well have been a rather better player than he suggests, but he clearly did play regularly for a number of years, but not much beyond his 30s. As far as his working life is concerned we learn that he began that, after graduating, as a journalist with a local newspaper in Aldershot, which at least explains why Last-Wicket Stand is as well written as it is.

Exactly what Clarke did after that I am still not entirely clear about, but it ultimately involved working overseas successfully before, in 2016, returning to the UK. Thereafter, and this is the crucial autobiographical element, despite trying hard to do so he has been unable to secure a full time job. He readily admits that his circumstances are not such that that caused any financial anguish, but at the same time he has not found the subsequent periodic consultancy contracts comfortable, despite the upside of additional time available to spend with his children and watching cricket.

The search for employment is an issue which is regularly examined as the season unfolds and, for anyone beyond their late 40s is certainly thought provoking. On a personal level I generally gained the impression that Clarke and I have a good deal in common, and I wonder whether, had I had the courage to throw myself on the mercies of the employment market a decade ago, as I seriously considered doing, my experience would have been the same. It is all academic now of course, but as I write this review a week after finishing the book it is a thought that is still very much in the front of my mind.

All things considered Last-Wicket Stand is an excellent read and, if Clarke’s own writings are not enough, they are supplemented by one of the best forewords I have ever read from a professional cricketer, as Ryan Ten Doeschate amply demonstrates the qualities that made him such a successful county captain.